Читать книгу Blood Will Tell - Benjamin Rush Davenport - Страница 5

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Some men have one hobby, some have many and some poor wretches have none. David Chapman had three hobbies and they occupied his whole mind and heart.

First in place and honor was the house of J. Dunlap. “The pillared firmament” might fall but his fidelity to the firm which he had served for forty years could never fail. His was the fierce and jealous love of the tigress for her cub where the house of Dunlap was concerned. He actually suffered, as from mortal hurt, when any one or any thing seemed to separate him from this great object of his adoration.

He had ever regarded the ownership of even a small interest by Walter Burton as an indignity, an outrage and a sacrilege. He hated him for defiling the chiefest idol of his religion and life. He was jealous of him because he separated in a manner the worshiper from the worshiped.

Because solely of jealous love for this High Joss of his, Chapman would have gladly, cheerfully suffered unheard of agonies to rid the house of J. Dunlap of this irreverent interloper who did not bear the sacred name of Dunlap.

The discovery of anything concealed, unravelling a mystery, ferreting out a secret was the next highest hobby in Chapman’s trinity of hobbies. He was passionately fond of practicing the theory of deduction, and was marvelously successful at arriving at correct conclusions. No crime, no mystery furnished a sensation for the Boston newspapers that did not call into play the exercise of this the second and most peculiar hobby of Chapman.

By some strange freak of nature in compounding the elements to form the character of David Chapman, an inordinate love for music was added to the incongruous mixture, and became the man’s third and most harmless hobby. Chapman had devoted years to the study of music, from pure love of sweet and melodious sounds. In the great and musical city of Boston no one excelled him as master of his favorite instrument, the violoncello. Like Balzac’s Herr Smucker, in his hours of relaxation, he bathed himself in the flood of his own melody.

Chapman owned, he was not poor, and occupied with his spinster sister, who was almost as withered as himself, a house well down in the business section of the city. He could not be induced to live in the more desirable suburbs. They were too far from the temple of his chiefest idol, the house of J. Dunlap.

“Jack Dunlap sails as master of our ship ‘Adams’ day after tomorrow,” suggested Chapman meditatively, as he sipped his tea and glanced across the table at the dry, almost fossilized, prim, starchy, old lady seated opposite him in his comfortable dining room that evening.

“Impossible, David, the boy has only just arrived.”

And the little old lady seemed to pick at the words as she uttered them much as a sparrow does at crumbs of bread.

“It is not impossible for it is a fact,” replied her brother dryly.

“What is the reason for his sudden departure? Did the house order him to sea again?” pecked out the sister.

“No, that is the strange part of the affair. Jack himself especially urged his appointment to the ship sailing day after tomorrow.”

“Then it is to get away from Boston before Lucy is married. I believe he is in love with her and can’t bear to see her marry Burton.”

Oh! boastful man, with all your assumed superiority in the realm of reason and your deductive theories and synthetical systems for forming correct conclusions. You are but a tyro, a mere infant in that great field of feeling where love is crowned king. The most withered, stale, neglected being in whose breast beats a woman’s heart, by that mysterious and sympathetic something called intuition can lead you like the child that you are in this, woman’s own province.

“You are entirely wrong, Arabella, as usual. Jack never thought of Miss Lucy in that way; besides he and Burton are exceedingly friendly; can’t you make it convenient to visit your friends in Bedford and see Martha Dunlap? If anything be wrong with Jack, and I can help him, I shall be glad to do so. The mother may be more communicative than the son.”

“I will surely make the attempt to learn if anything be wrong, and gladly, too; I have always loved that boy Jack, and if he be in trouble I want you to help him all in your power, David.” The little old maid’s face flushed in the earnestness of the expression.

“Burton is still an unsolved problem to me,” and in saying the words Chapman’s jaws moved with a kind of snap, like a steel trap, while his eyes had the glitter of a serpent’s in them as he continued, “for years I have observed him closely and I cannot make him out at all. I am baffled by sudden changes of mood in the man; at times he is reckless, gay, thoughtless, frivolous, and I sometimes think lacking in moral stamina; again he is dignified, kind, courteous, reserved and seems to possess the highest standard of morals.”

“I don’t suppose that he is unlike other men; they all have moods. You do yourself, David, and very unpleasant moods, too,” said Arabella with the proverbial sourness of the typical New England spinster.

“Well, I may have moods, as you say, Arabella, but I don’t break out suddenly in a kind of frenzy of gaiety, sing and shout like a street Arab and then as quickly relapse into a superlatively dead calm of dignity and the irreproachable demeanor of a cultured gentleman.

“Now, David, you are allowing your dislike for Burton and your prejudice to overdraw the picture,” said prim Miss Arabella, as she daintily raised the teacup to her lips.

“I am not overdrawing the picture! I have seen and heard Burton when he thought that he was alone in the office, and I say that there is something queer about him; Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde of that old story are common characters in comparison. I knew his father well; he was an every-day sort of successful business man; whom his father married and what she was like I do not know, but I shall find out some day, as therein may lie the reading of the riddle,” retorted the brother vehemently.

“As Lucy Dunlap will be married to the man shortly and it will then be too late to do anything, no matter what is the result of your inquiry, it seems to me that you should cease to interest yourself in the matter,” chirped the bird-like voice of Miss Arabella.

“I can’t! I am absolutely fascinated by the study of this man’s strange, incongruous character; you remember what I told you when I returned from the only visit I ever made at Burton’s house. It was business that forced me to go there, and I have never forgotten what I saw and heard. I am haunted by something that I cannot define,” said Chapman, intensity of feeling causing his pale face and hairless head to assume the appearance of the bald-eagle or some other bird of prey.

“Think of it, Arabella! That summer day as I reached the door of his lonely dwelling, surrounded by that great garden, through the open windows there came crashing upon my ears such a wild, weird burst of song that it held me motionless where I stood. The sound of those musical screams of melodious frenzy, dying away in rythmic cadence until it seemed the soft summer breeze echoed the sweet harmony in its sighing. Words, music and expression now wild and unbridled as the shriek of a panther, and then low, gentle and soothing as the murmuring of a peaceful brook,” cried Chapman, becoming more intense as his musical memory reproduced the sounds he sought to describe.

“David, you know that music is a passion with you, and doubtless your sensitive ear gave added accent and meaning to the improvised music of a careless, idle young man,” interrupted Miss Arabella.

“Not so! Not so! I swear that no careless, idle man ever improvised such wild melody; it is something unusual in the man; when at last the outburst ceased, and I summoned strength to ring the bell, there was something almost supernatural that enabled that frenzied musician to meet me with the suavity of an ordinary cultured gentleman of Boston as Burton did when I entered his sitting room.”

“Brother, I fear that imagination and hatred in this instance are sadly warping your usually sound judgment,” quietly replied the sedate sister, seeing the increasing excitement of her brother.

“Imagination created also, I suppose, the uncanny, barbaric splendor with which his apartments were decorated which I described to you,” sneered the man.

“All young men affect something of that kind, I am told, in the adornment of their rooms,” rejoined the spinster, mincing her words, and, old as she was, assuming embarrassment in mentioning young men’s rooms.

“Nonsense! Arabella, I have seen many of the Harvard men’s rooms. A few swords, daggers, and other weapons; a skin or two of wild animals; something of that kind, but Burton’s apartments were differently decorated; masses of striking colors, gaudy, glaring, yet so blended by an artistic eye that they were not offensive to the sight. Articles of furniture of such strange, savage and grotesque shape as to suggest a barbarian as the designer. The carving on the woodwork, the paneling, the tone and impression created by sight of it all were such as must have filled the souls of the Spanish conquerors when they first gazed upon the barbaric grandeur of the Moors, as exposed to their wondering eyes by the conquest of Granada.”

“Don’t get excited, David!” said staid Miss Arabella. “Suppose that you should discover something to the discredit of Burton, what use could and would you make of it?”

The veins in Chapman’s thin neck and bony brow became swollen and distended as if straining to burst the skin that covered them; his eyes flashed baleful fire, as extending his arm and grasping the empty air as if it were his enemy, he fairly hissed:

“I! I! I would tear him out of the house of J. Dunlap, intruder that he is, and cast him into the gutter! Yea! though I tore the heartstrings of a million women such as Lucy Dunlap! What is she or her heart in comparison with the glory of Boston’s oldest business name?”

Panting, as a weary hound, who exhausted but exultant, fastens his fangs in the hunted stag, overcome by the violence of his hatred, David Chapman dropped down into his chair.

Nestling among grand old oaks and profusion of shrubbery, now leafless in the November air of New England, on the top of the highest hill in that portion of the suburbs, sat the “Eyrie,” the bachelor home of Walter Burton.

Though the house was small, the conservatory adjoining it was one of the largest in the city. Burton was an ardent lover of flowers, and an active collector of rare plants. The house stood in the center of an extensive and well kept garden through which winding paths ran in every direction.

The place would have seemed lonely to one not possessing within himself resources sufficient to furnish him entertainment independent of the society of others.

Burton never knew loneliness. He was an accomplished musician, an artist of more than ordinary ability, a zealous horticulturist, and an omnivorous devourer of books.

A housekeeper who was cook at the same time, one man and a boy for the garden and conservatory and a valet constituted the household servants of the “Eyrie.”

At the moment that Chapman’s wrathful mind was expressing its concentrated hate for him, the owner of the white house on the hill sat before the open grand piano in his music-room, his shapely hands wandering listlessly over the keys, touching them once in a while in an aimless manner. The young man’s mind was filled with other thoughts than music.

Chapman had drawn an accurate picture of Burton’s apartments in many respects, yet he had forgotten to mention the many musical instruments scattered about the rooms. Harp, guitar, mandolin, violin, banjo and numberless sheets of music, some printed and some written, marked this as the abode of a natural musician. Burton was equally proficient in the use of each of the instruments lying about the room, as well as being the author of original compositions of great beauty and merit.

The odor of violets perfumed the whole house. Great bunches of these, Burton’s favorite flower, filled antique and queerly shaped vases in each room.

Burton ceased to even sound the keys on which his hands rested, and as some scene was disclosed to his sympathetic soul, his soft brown eyes were dimmed by a suspicious moisture. Sighing sadly he murmured:

“Poor Jack! While I am in a heaven of bliss with the woman I love, surrounded by all that makes life enjoyable, he, poor old chap, alone, heartsick and hopeless, will be battling with the stormy waves of the ocean. Alas! Fate how inscrutable!”

As his mind drifted onward in this channel of thought, he added more audibly, “What a heart Jack has! There is a man! He will carry his secret uncomplaining and in silence to his grave, that, too, without permitting envy or jealousy to fill his soul with hatred; I would that I could do something to assuage the pain of that brave heart.” And at the word “brave” the stream of his wandering fancy seemed to take a new direction.

“Brave! Men who have sailed with him say he knows no fear; the last voyage they tell how he sprang into the icy sea, all booted as he was, waves mountain high, the night of inky blackness, to save a worthless, brutal Lascar sailor. Tender as a woman, when a mere child as careful of baby Cousin Lucy as a granddame could be, and ever her sturdy little knight and champion from babyhood. Poor Jack!”

Again the current of his thought changed its course. He paused and whispered to himself, “Lucy, am I worthy of her? Shall I prove as kind, as true and brave a husband as Jack would be to her? Oh! God, I hope so, I will try so hard. Sometimes there seems to come a strange inexplicable spell over my spirit—a something that is beyond my control. A madness seems to possess my very soul. Involuntarily I say and do that, during the time that this mysterious influence holds me powerless in its grasp, that is so foreign to my natural self that I shudder and grow sick at heart at the thought of the end to which it may lead me.”

At the recollection of some horror of the past the young man’s face paled and he shivered as if struck by a cold blast of winter wind.

“Ought I to tell Lucy of these singular manifestations? Ought I to alarm my darling concerning something that may partly be imaginary? I am uncertain what, loving her as I do, is right; I can always absent myself from her presence when I feel that hateful influence upon me, and perhaps after I am married I may be freed from the horrible thraldom of that irresistible power that clutches me in its terrible grasp. I cannot bear the idea of giving my dear love useless pain or trouble. Had I not better wait?”

At that moment some unpleasant fact must have suggested itself or rather forced itself upon Burton’s mind for he pushed back the piano-stool and rising walked with impatient steps about the room, saying:

“It would be ridiculous! Absurd! Really unworthy of both Lucy and myself even to mention the subject! Long ago that old, nonsensical prejudice had disappeared, at least among cultivated people in America. There is not a shade of doubt but that both the Messrs. Dunlap and Lucy are aware of the fact that my mother was a quadroon. Doubtless that circumstance is deemed so trivial that it never has occurred to them to mention it to me. People of education and refinement, regardless of the color of skin, are welcome in the home of the Dunlaps as everywhere else where enlightenment has dispelled prejudice.”

He paused and bursting into a musical and merry laugh at something that his memory recalled, exclaimed,

“Why, I have seen men and women as black as the proverbial ‘ace of spades,’ the guests of honor in Mr. James Dunlap’s house, as elsewhere in Boston. I shall neither bore nor insult the intelligence of my sweetheart or her family by introducing the absurd subject of blood in connection with our marriage. The idea of blood making any difference! Men are neither hounds nor horses!”

Laughing at the odd conceit that men, hounds and horses should be considered akin by any one not absolutely benighted, he resumed his seat at the piano and began playing a gay waltz tune then popular with the dancing set of Boston’s exclusive circle.

As Burton ended the piece of music with a fantastic flourish of his own composition, he turned and saw his valet standing silently waiting for his master to cease playing.

“Ah! Victor, are the hampers packed carefully?” exclaimed Burton.

“Yes, sir,” replied the valet, pronouncing his words with marked French accent. “The steward at your club furnished all the articles on the list that the housekeeper lacked, sir.”

“You are sure that you put in the hampers the ‘44’ vintage of champagne, the Burgundy imported by myself, and you examined the cigars to be certain to get only those of the last lot from Havana?”

“Quite sure, sir; I packed everything myself, as you told me you were especially anxious to have only the very best selected,” said the little Frenchman.

“Now, listen, Victor; tomorrow I dine away from home, but before I leave the house I shall arrange a box of flowers, which, with the hampers, you are to carry in my dog-cart to Dunlap’s wharf and there you are to have them placed in the cabin of the ship ‘Adams.’ You will open the box of flowers and arrange them tastefully, as I know you can, about the master’s stateroom—take a half-dozen vases to put them in.”

“Very good, sir; it shall be done as you say, sir,” answered the valet bowing and moving toward the door.

“Hold on, Victor!” called Burton, “I wish to add just this: if by any accident, no matter what, you fail to get these things on board the ‘Adams’ before she sails, my gentle youth, I will break your neck.”

So admonished the servant bowed low and left the room, as his master turned again to the piano and began to make the room ring with a furious and warlike march.