THE LOWRY-TURCK ENTANGLEMENT
The interesting story of "The Swiss Family Robertson" told and the usual
comment made, the Colonel, still beaming, turned to the Young Lady.
"Will you please tell us something?" he said.
And her reply to him was very simple and graceful;
"I can at least tell you about the 'Lowry-Turck Entanglement,' for I was
familiar with the circumstances." Then she continued:
THE LOWRY-TURCK ENTANGLEMENT
Apropos of the affair of Harvey Lowry and Angeline Turck, as also
apropos of many other affairs of similar nature, it is very much to be
feared that one of the proverbs is unreliable. "Necessity is the mother
of invention" comes off the tongue glibly enough, but why "mother"? What
rules the camp, the court, the grove, and what makes the world go
around? What but love, and is not Love, when personified, a male? And
has he not been the cause of more inventions than have all others
combined? Certainly it was he who suggested an invention of the
Lowry-Turck love affair. He is Necessity disguised; and he is not a
mother.
Of course Love need not grumble. He is no worse off than are other
fathers. If a boy becomes famous in the world the fact is attributed to
his noble mother; if he becomes infamous, the community says, "Like
father, like son"--which is hardly fair. Fathers are useful. Not only
did every person who ever invented anything have a father, but without
the father romance would be robbed of one of its most useful and
steadfast figures. These remarks, prefacing a love story, may be
didactic and ponderous and prosy, but they are true.
It is true, as well, that, though this is a love story pure and simple,
Mr. Turck, the father in the case, may, in a sense, be looked upon as
among the characters who belong to the world of romance, for he was the
very personification of one accepted type of parent in love stories,
being perverse, tyrannical and hard-hearted, looking upon lovers as the
ranchman does on wolves, and resolved to keep his daughter to himself
indefinitely. He had a red face, tufts of side whiskers which grew out
nearly at right angles, and a bellowing voice which would have made his
fortune as skipper of a sailing craft in noisy seas. It was, perhaps,
such men as Mr. Turck who brought the father into disrepute before the
first romance was written, and there is little doubt, too, that it has
been such daughters as Angeline Turck who have innocently aggravated the
father's already uncertain temper and thus made his name the byword it
has become--in fiction.
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 shipment 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 passed 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 passed 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 embarrassed 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 shifting 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 companionship 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 quantity 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
reassuring 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 noble. 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 reassuring 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]