The Cassowary Part 24

Angeline, at the time this affair began, was seventeen and completely sovereign over the heart of Harvey Lowry--to quote from one of the young gentleman's letters to the young lady herself. They had been in love six months, according to Angeline's computation, seven, according to that of Harvey; but naturally, he had been first to feel and feed the flame.

Harvey, though successful in his suit, was not, in personal appearance, the ideal lover for a girl of Angeline's age--that is, he was not tall, nor dark, nor haughty of mien. On the contrary, he was short, fair and round-faced, and had a thoroughly business-like demeanor. He looked like a young man whose soul was all in the profit on a next s.h.i.+pment of barrel-hoops, or something, when, in truth, he had endless romantic fancies. In his sentiment lay his charm, and it was to this quality that, as she came to know him well, the fair Angeline had completely yielded. There had been a declaration of love and no refusal, but as yet no formal engagement existed. That, it was mutually understood, must come later, the delay being attributable to certain obstacles of a financial nature. Meanwhile the time pa.s.sed most pleasantly. There were meetings where Harvey said things calculated to touch the heart, and there was much letter-writing. It was this last which wrecked the air-castle.

One evening when Angeline's parents were alone, Mr. Turck startled his wife by demanding suddenly:

"What's that young Lowry coming here so much for? I don't like it!"

Mrs. Turck replied mildly that she supposed Mr. Lowry came chiefly to see Angeline. She saw nothing very wrong in that. He was said to be a steady young man, and, of course, Angeline must have harmless company occasionally.

"I don't care whether he's steady or not. He's coming here too much.

Don't tell me anything about 'harmless company!' He's after Angeline, and I won't have it! I'll look into this thing!" And Mr. Turck gave utterance to a sound which may be indifferently described as a determined snort. Mrs. Turck understood it, and looked for trouble of some sort in the near future. She had reason.

The evening before, Harvey, after leaving the house, had kissed Angeline's hand at the garden gate. It had been at this electrical moment that Mr. Turck looked out of the sitting-room window, instead of attending to his newspaper as he should have done, and noted the two forms showing dimly through the gathering shade. He did not distinctly see the kiss, but something in the movement was vaguely reminiscent to him. His suspicions were aroused. He had called harshly to Angeline to come in and go to her mother, and she had obeyed, while Harvey melted away into the summer night, after the manner of lovers who have attracted the paternal eye. Neither of the two was much disturbed. There was a glow in the heart of each, a glow too deep to be affected by an ominous word or two. Yet this episode had led to Mr. Turck's outbreak before his wife.

The first blow fell early. Before two more days had pa.s.sed Mr. Turck had broken out at the breakfast table and had forbidden Angeline to have any further relations of any sort with Harvey Lowry. She must not speak to him. There were tears and quite a scene. Even the subdued Mrs. Turck ventured to say a word, and asked what Angeline could do when meeting Harvey on the street? To this only the curt reply was given that "a dignified bow" was enough. It was rather hard. The old gentleman did not know it, his meek wife did not suspect it, and Angeline would never have believed it, but the truth is, if Angeline's life had depended on the making of a dignified bow, it would have been short shrift for her. It must be regretfully admitted that in the village of Willow Bend the bow, as practiced by maids alike, was such a casual bob of the head as conveyed not the remotest conception of any dignity. It may have been a fact that this Arcadian bob was subject to modification among the elders, but that does not matter. The father, looking upon Angeline's meek face and recognizing the accustomed submission in his wife's eyes, felt that he had done a fit and becoming morning's work, and drank his coffee calmly, while Angeline trifled sadly with her spoon and looked dumbly out of the nearest window.

That evening Lowry called, and was told by the servant maid who met him at the door that he could not enter. The young man understood well enough that this was under Mr. Turck's direction, and went away less dispirited than he might have been. The next day Mrs. Turck, who feared to do otherwise, brought to the lord of the house a tinted piece of folded paper, which proved to be a letter from Harvey to the again suspiciously rosy Angeline. This dangerous piece of Love's fighting gear had been detected by Mrs. Turck's eagle eye among the trifles on her daughter's work table. A charge direct, tears, expostulations, confession, and the delivery of the missive over to the enemy had followed swiftly. The hair stood upon the paternal head in disapproval as Mr. Turck held the pink letter between his thumb and forefinger and read it stridently aloud. After all, there was little in it to excite either anger or apprehension, for it was only an expression of hope that the writer could see Angeline that evening at a little party at the home of a mutual friend, but, as with venomous insects, its sting was in its tail, for it was signed solely with these three letters: "I. L. Y."

Now, even Mr. Turck did not need to be told what the letters he described as "those infamous characters" signified. The world knows them. His wife, too, flushed when he showed them to her, and then, for once bridling a little at the "infamous," she reminded him that there was a time when Mr. Turck himself, as a matter of custom and daily habit, wrote those very characters at the end of all his letters; but, though for a moment embarra.s.sed by this allusion, the husband only sniffed.

Angeline had a bad half hour over the "=I. L. Y.=," and the end was submission almost abject, for Mr. Turck would brook no half-way measures. The girl promised neither to write to nor read any letters from the young man so disapproved. In a sharp communication from Mr.

Turck, Harvey Lowry was made to know the unpopularity of his epistolary efforts in the Turck household, and for a day or two apparently bowed his head to the paternal will. But who may comprehend the ways of a lover? One morning not a week after the "I. L. Y." affair, Mr. Turck saw another suspicious-looking envelope in the bundle of letters he carried home from the post-office at luncheon time. He looked hard at Angeline's face when she opened the letter at the table and noted there was an expression of confusion and surprise. Without a word, he stretched out an authoritative hand, and, without a word, Angeline gave him the small, open sheet of heavy cream colored paper. This is what he saw, drawn with pen and ink, on the fair page: [Symbol: full]

Only that and nothing more.

It was now that Angeline's persecutions began in earnest. She was questioned, and threatened, and bullied, and coaxed, but she would not tell the meaning of those four lines drawn upon that virgin page, and sent to her in an envelope addressed in the handwriting of Harvey Lowry.

In truth, the poor girl did not know, and could not guess, what the thing meant, herself. Denial tears, supplication--all were of no avail.

Mr. Turck would not believe his daughter. He held the drawing upside down, sideways, and then almost horizontal, as one does in reading where the letters are purposely made tall and thin, but he could make nothing of it, and raged the more at his incompetence. "It looks a little like a side plan of a room," he muttered to himself, "but it isn't complete.

Have the fools arranged to run away and are they planning a house already?" The idea was too much for him. He seized his hat and went forth for advice.

Mr. Turck was in the office of Baldison, a contractor and builder, within five minutes. "Here, Baldison," he bellowed as he came in, "what is this? Is it part of a plan of a house, or, if not, what is it?"

Mr. Baldison was a cautious man, and, taking the paper, he examined the connected lines long and deliberately. His comment, when he made it, was not entirely satisfying.

"It might be part of a side plan of one story," he said, "but it ain't finished. There's only one brace in, and the cross beam is lacking. If it wasn't for the left-hand upright, I should say it was part of a swing-crane, but the pulley isn't strung. I don't know what it is. Who made it?"

But Mr. Turck did not go into particulars. He left Baldison's place and studied out the problem in his own office; he went out again and asked in vain the opinion of a dozen men, and he went home that evening baffled and in a frame of mind of which the less said the better. Within twenty-four hours Angeline was packed off to the Misses Cutlet's boarding-school in distant Belleville, to be "finished," as her mother described it. The irate father used other and far less becoming words.

This s.h.i.+fting of the scene when, to her, so much of importance was involved, was a most serious thing to Angeline. But it might have been much worse than it proved at the school. Plump Bessey Payton, another girl from Willow Bend, was there, and it was easily so arranged that the two occupied adjoining rooms. They had been friends for years, and the renewed companions.h.i.+p was much for Angeline. It aided in partial distraction.

And now this story, which has been--from an ordinary point of view--little more than a comedy, develops into something very like a tragedy. It was so to a young girl, at least. The Misses Cutlet had been instructed to keep a sharp eye open, and report, as well as they might, upon the quant.i.ty of Angeline's correspondence. They had little to tell.

Angeline received few letters, and none frequently from any one person, so far as could be learned from the envelopes addressed to her. The parents were content.

And Angeline really had no correspondence with Harvey Lowry. She was a young woman who would keep her word, and she did not write to him, while from him came no message save an occasional envelope containing only a slip of paper upon which appeared the mysterious symbol. But was not that enough? Did it not indicate that she was still in his heart, and that he would be always hers? Those lines must have a meaning, and though she could not translate them, she felt it was only because Harvey had forgotten that he had never given her the key. What of that? She knew instinctively that the story they told was one of faith and faithfulness. How delicate of him, and how thoughtful that such loving reminder should come at times, and how wonderful it was that he should have invented such a thing for her dear sake alone! Her love grew with the months, and so, unfortunately, despite the letters with the rea.s.suring figure, did her unhappiness.

It is perhaps unreasonable that we should laugh at the loves of the young, at what we call "calf love" in the male, and a "schoolgirl's fancy" in the maiden, for the springs of the heart do not always deepen with the years. Well for youth is it that it owns such wonderfully recuperative forces of mind and body; sad would it be to the elders if, without such recuperative powers, their feelings were given such abandonment. Youth's hurts are sometimes serious. Angeline was growing from the subjugated girl into the suffering woman. Other young women, she reasoned, were allowed to love and to marry the men of their choice.

Why should she be made so cruel an exception? She idealized the absent, as the loving, so often do. In her mind, Harvey Lowry had grown from one for whom she cared more than for others into a hero without a flaw, one thoughtful, considerate, self-denying and altogether n.o.ble. The sentimental vein in her nature broadened and deepened, and she placed a greater value on the sweet reminder of the mysterious figures in the letters. And all for her! How constant he was, and how hard the lot of both of them! She became feverish and impatient. Her studies lost all interest, her cheeks became paler, thinner, her manner more languid. It could not last.

So the months went by until the end of the scholastic year was close at hand. Angeline would soon be in Willow Bend again and with her parents.

She would meet Harvey Lowry again--that was inevitable. What would the near vacation bring to her? she asked herself. She was growing stubborn now. The portentous figure of her father no longer loomed so highly in her eyes as formerly, and she was the decided woman, with a woman's heart and will, and a woman's rights. What might be the summer's history!

Accidents--as thoughtful people are much given to remark--have sometimes great effect on the affairs of human beings.

One day as Angeline, visiting her friend, stood looking at her still agreeable image in Bess' mirror, she saw, stuck in the frame, among cards, notes and photographs, a square of yellowish paper. The coloring seemed to have come from age, but of that Angeline made no note. All she saw or knew was that the paper bore this mystic sign upon it: [Symbol: box]

For a moment or two the girl stood motionless. Power of speech and movement were gone. Then, "Bess," she called tremblingly; "what is this?" and she held out the paper for inspection.

"That? Oh, that is from Harvey Lowry," said Bess composedly.

"But, oh, Bess," cried the girl excitedly, "what does it mean?"

"Can't you guess?" was the reply.

"No, I can't," was the slow answer, "and--and I've seen it before."

The careless Bess was aroused now, and there was a flash in her black eyes. "How dare Harvey Lowry have sent one of those to any one else?"

she broke out impetuously, but her excitement was only momentary. She began to laugh. "Well, it was a good while ago, after all." And so her anger vanished.

Angeline was recovering herself, though with an effort. "But tell me--tell me what it means," she demanded.

"Why, you stupid girl!" was the reply. "I guessed it in the first ten minutes--and once we signed all our letters with it. Now, see here," and she took paper and pencil and drew a perpendicular mark, thus: [Symbol: vertical]

"That is 'I' isn't it? Well then, I'll put on this mark," and she added a line horizontally, making this figure: [Symbol: ell]

"That's an 'L' you see. Next, to make your 'Y,' you put on this"--she made two added marks--"and you have this: [Symbol: full]

"There's your 'I. L. Y.' sign!"

Angeline was stunned. Never was a dream dispelled so suddenly and harshly. Not for her had that mystic figure been devised, but for another, and it had been utilized a second time, as if there were no sacredness to such things! It mattered not how much Harvey Lowry might be interested in her now, she was but a sort of second-hand girl. Anger took the place of her unhappiness. "Delicate and thoughtful," indeed! To send those rea.s.suring notes to her was now but a cheap impertinence! She had been accustomed, in her pity of herself, to quote something from Shakespeare which seemed to her to have a peculiarly sad and fitting application: "Not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep which thou owed'st yesterday!"

Here were poppy and mandragora and syrups enough, all administered in one rude prescription, as to the efficacy of which there could be no shadow of a doubt!

Somehow the brooding and disappointed woman seemed to melt away now, and there reappeared the impulsive girl again. It was an angry girl, though.

Her first grief over--and it lasted but for a day--she resolved upon an epistolary feat of her own. She wrote three letters. The first was to Harvey Lowry. It was not quite, but nearly, as school-girlish as she might have written a year earlier, being distinctly of the "'tis better thus" variety and "coldly dissecting," as she afterwards said in confidence to a bosom friend. In it she bade her admirer an eternal farewell, notwithstanding the fact that they must inevitably see each other every day in the week as soon as she returned to Willow Bend. This labored epistle she placed in another, of a meek and lowly tenor, to her father. Both of these she inclosed in a letter to her mother.

It is needless to say that upon receipt of these letters in Willow Bend the Turck family fairly glowed. The old gentleman sent Angeline's letter to Harvey, accompanied by a stiff one of his own, and sent to Belleville a substantial addition to his daughter's quarterly allowance.

As to Harvey Lowry, who has been much neglected, his own story deserves some attention now. When he had read the two letters he was a most perplexed young man. It had never occurred to him that to use his "I. L.

Y." device a second time, or rather with a second girl, was anything out of the way, for, with all his sentiment, Harvey was not insistent upon the finer shadings in the affairs of life, even when appertaining to the heart. He had really cared for Angeline, but he did not become a soured and disappointed man. Despite the "dissecting" letter, he and Angeline often met and spoke in later times, and when, finally, she married, and married well, there was none more gratified than he. Time tells in the village as much as it does elsewhere. Nothing could extract quite all the romance from the ingenious Harvey. After fluttering around the village beauties for a time he ended by marrying a sweet-tempered, freckled country girl, with whom he lives in great content in a small house, crowded now with jolly, freckled boys and girls. And here comes relation of something which shows how hard it is to eliminate the once implanted sentimental tendency. To this day, when the father of the freckled family has occasion to write to the mother, he invariably signs his letters: [Symbol: full]

CHAPTER XXVI

THE PALE PEAc.o.c.k AND THE PURPLE HERRING

The Young Lady was much applauded. Colonel Livingstone looked into Stafford's eyes, and was hesitant. Yet he still had something of the old masterly way about him, and he spoke out openly and very frankly. There is something about the United States army officer that is worth while.

He rose to the occasion. The manner in which he rose to it was worthy of his occupation and rank. He said: