VI.
No social event of the season equalled the Burton-Dunlap wedding. For weeks prior to the date of the ceremony it had been the one all-engrossing theme of conversation with everybody; that is, everybody who was anybody, in the metropolis of the Old Bay State.
The immense settlement, the magnificent gifts, the exquisite trousseau from Paris, the surpassing beauty of the bride, the culture and accomplishments of the handsome groom, the exalted position of the Dunlap family, these formed the almost exclusive topics of Boston’s most exclusive set for many weeks before the wedding.
What a grand church wedding it was! The church was a perfect mass of flowers and plants of the rarest and most expensive kind. The music grandissimo beyond expression. A bishop assisted by two clergymen performed the ceremony. The bride, a dream of loveliness in lace, satin and orange blossoms; the groom a model of grace and chivalry; the tiny maids, earth-born angels; the ushers Boston’s bluest blooded scions of the Pilgrim Fathers, and finally everybody who was anybody was there.
And the reception! The Dunlap mansion and grounds were resplendent in a blaze of light; the beauty, talent, wealth and great names of New England were gathered there to congratulate the happy bride, Dunlap’s heiress, and the fortunate groom.
“A most appropriate match! How fortunate for all concerned! How delightful for the two old gentlemen!” declared everybody who was anybody.
Four special policemen guarded the glittering array of almost priceless wedding presents; in the splendid refreshment room, brilliant in glittering glass and silver, Boston’s best and gentlest pledged the happy bride and groom in many a glass of rarest wine and wished long life and happiness to that charming, well-mated pair.
The bride, radiant in her glorious beauty, rejecting as adornment for this occasion, diamond necklace and tiara, gifts of the groom, selected a simple coil of snowy pearls.
“The gift of my Cousin Jack,” she proudly said. “My earliest lover and most steadfast friend.”
The savings of years of sailor life had been expended ungrudgingly to lay this tribute of love on that fair bosom.
How well assured was the future of this fortunate couple! The prospect stretched before them like one long, joyous journey of uninterrupted bliss. Life’s pathway all lined with thornless roses beneath summer’s smiling sky.
Naught seemed lacking to make assurance of the future doubly sure. Youth, health, wealth, social position, culture, refinement, intelligence, amiability.
Soft strains of music floated on the perfumed air, bright eyes “spake love to eyes that spake again,” midst palms and in flower-garlanded recesses gentle voices whispered words of love to willing ears; in the center of this unalloyed blissfulness were Burton and his bride.
“Old bachelors are as excitable concerning marriage as old spinsters can possibly be. See Mr. John Dunlap, how flushed and nervous he seems! He hovers about the bride like an anxious mother!” So said two elderly grand-dames behind their fans while watching the group about Burton’s fair young wife.
Among that gay and gallant company moved one restless figure and peering face. David Chapman, leaving his sister, Miss Arabella, under the protecting care of Mrs. Church, lest during the confusion of so large a gathering, some daring cavalier, enamored of her maiden-charms, should elope with the guileless creature, mingled with the throng of guests, unobtrusive, but ever vigilant and watchful.
Chapman’s countenance bore an odd expression, a mixture of satisfied curiosity, vindictiveness and regret.
That very day a superannuated sailor who for years had served the house of Dunlap, and now acted as ship-keeper for vessels in its employ, called to report to the superintendent some trifling loss. Before leaving he asked respectfully, knuckling his forehead.
“Is the manager goin’ to marry ter’day?”
“Yes; why?” said Chapman sharply.
“Nothin’ ’cept I’ve often seen his mother and took notice of him here,” replied the man.
“Where did you see Mr. Burton’s mother? Who was she?” Chapman asked eagerly in his keen way.
“In Port au Prince, mor’n twenty-five year er’go. She was Ducros’, the sugar planter’s darter, and the puttiest quadroon I ever seen. Yea, the puttiest woman of any kind I ever seen,” answered the old ship-keeper in a reminiscent tone.
Chapman’s eyes fairly sparkled with pleasure as he thus secured a clew for future investigation, but without asking other questions he dismissed the retired seaman. It was this information that gave to his face that singular expression during the reception.
A private palace car stood on the track in the station waiting for the coming of the bridal party. Naught less than a special train could be considered when it was decided that Florida should be the favored spot where the wealthy Haitien and his bride, the Dunlap heiress, would spend their honeymoon.
Soft and balmy are the breezes, that pouring through the open windows of the car, flood the interior with odors of pine cones and orange blooms, as Burton’s special train speeds through the Flower State of the Union.
The car is decked with the fresh and gorgeous blossoms of this snowless land; yet of all the fairest is that sweet bud that rests on Burton’s breast.
“Walter, how sweet is life when one loves and is beloved,” said Burton’s young wife dreamily, raising her head from his breast and gazing fondly into her husband’s eyes.
“Yes, love, life then is heaven on earth, sweet wife,” whispered the husband clasping closely the yielding figure in his arms.
“I am so happy, dearest Walter, I love you so dearly,” murmured Lucy clinging still closer to her lover.
“You will always love me thus, I hope, my darling,” said Walter, as he kissed the white forehead of his bride.
“Of course I shall, my own dear husband,” answered unhesitatingly the happy, trusting woman.
“Could nothing, no matter what, however unexpected and unforeseen, shake your faith in me, or take from me that love I hold so sacred and so dear?” asked Burton earnestly, pressing his wife to his heart.
“Nothing could alter my love for you, my husband,” answered Lucy quickly, as she raised her head and kissed him.
The special train slows up at a small station. Put on breaks! The whistle calls, and the train stops until the dispatcher can get a “clear track” message from the next station.
The crowd of negroes, male and female, large and small, stare with wondering admiration at the beautiful being who appears on the rear platform of the car accompanied by such a perfect Adonis of a man.
Lucy Burton was an object not likely to escape attention. Her full round form, slender, yet molded into most delicious curves, was shown to perfection by the tight-fitting traveling gown of some kind of soft stuff that she wore; her happy, beautiful face, bright with the love-light in her hazel eyes, presented a picture calculated to cause even the most fastidious to stare. To the ignorant black people she was a revelation of loveliness.
As the negroes, in opened-mouthed wonder, came closer and clustered about the steps of the car, their great eyes wide and white, Lucy drew back a little and somewhat timidly slipped her hand into her husband’s, whispering:
“I am afraid of them, they are so black and shocking with their rolling eyes and thick lips.”
“Nonsense! sweetheart,” said Walter with a laugh not all together spontaneous.
“They are a merry, gentle folk, gay and good-natured; the Southern people would have no other nurses for their babies. I thought New England people had long since ceased to notice the color of mankind’s skin.”
“But, Walter, how horrid they are! We see so few of them in New England that they don’t seem like these. How dreadfully black and brutal they are. Let us go inside, I really am afraid!” cried Lucy in a low voice and started to retreat.
At that moment a tall and very black woman who held a baby at her breast, negro-like, carried away by thoughtless good nature and admiration for the lovely stranger, raised her ink-colored picaninny, and in motherly pride thrust it forward until its little wooly black head almost touched Lucy’s bosom.
With one glance of loathing, terror and unconcealed horror at the object resting nearly on her breast, Lucy gave a scream of fear and fled. Throwing herself on one of the settees in the car she buried her face among the cushions and wept solely from fright and nervousness.
“Why! sweetheart, what is the matter? There is nothing to fear. Those poor people were only admiring you, my darling,” cried Burton hurrying to his young wife’s side and seeking to quiet her fears.
“I can’t help it, Walter, all those black faces crowded together near to me was awful, and that dreadful little black thing almost touched me,” sobbed Lucy nervously.
“Darling, the dreadful little black thing was only a harmless baby,” replied the husband soothingly.
“Baby!” cried the astonished young woman, lifting her head from the cushions and regarding her companion through her undried tears with doubt, as if suspecting him of joking. “I thought it was an ape or some hideous little imp! Baby!” and seeing that there was no joke about what her husband said, she added:
“I didn’t know negroes looked like that when babies. I would not touch that loathsome, horrid thing for worlds. It made my flesh fairly quiver to see it even near me.”
Walter Burton succeeded in allaying the alarm of his wife only after the train had resumed its rapid journey southward. When Lucy, lulled to sleep by the low music of the guitar which he played to distract her attention from the unpleasant recollection, no longer demanded his presence, Burton sought the smoking-room of the car and passed an hour in solemn, profound meditation, as he puffed continuously fragrant Havanas.
“I was wrong! She did not know. Now she never shall if I can prevent it.” Such were the words of Lucy’s husband when throwing away his cigar he arose to rejoin his young wife.
Many hundred miles from flowery Florida across a watery way, a ship was wildly tossing upon an angry, sullen sea. For three days and nights with ceaseless toil, in constant danger, the weary crew had battled with howling winds and tempestuous waves.
A storm of awe-inspiring fury had burst upon the good ship “Adams,” of Boston, bound for Melbourne, on the night of December the nineteenth in that good year of our Lord.
The superb seamanship of the skipper, combined with the prompt alacrity of the willing crew, alone saved the ship from adding her broken frame to that countless multitude which rest beneath the waves.
The wind was still blowing a gale, but there was perceptibly less force in it, as shrieking it tore through the rigging and against the almost bare masts, than there had been in three days.
Two men stood in the cabin, enveloped in oil-skins, with rubber boots reaching above their knees. Their eyes were red from wind and watching, while they answered the heave of the ship wearily as if worn out with the excessive labor of the last seventy-two hours. The men were the two mates of the “Adams.” The captain had sent them below for a glass of grog and a biscuit. There had been no fire in the galley for the three days that the storm had beaten upon the ship.
“The skipper must be made of iron,” said the shorter man, Morgan, the second officer.
“He has hardly left the deck a minute since the squall struck us, and he is as quick and strong as a shark,” he continued, munching on the biscuit and balancing himself carefully as he raised his glass of grog.
“Every inch a sailor is the skipper,” growled the larger man hoarsely.
“Sailed with Captain Dunlap in the ‘Lucy,’ and no better master ever trod a quarter-deck,” added Mr. Brice, the first officer of the “Adams.”
“He surely knows his business and handles the ship with the ease a Chinaman does his chopsticks, but he’s the surliest, most silent skipper I ever sailed with. You told us, Mr. Brice, when you came aboard that he was the jolliest; was he like this when you were with him on the ‘Lucy’?” said the second mate inquiringly.
“No, he wasn’t!” mumbled old Brice in answer.
“Somethin’ went wrong with him ashore,” adding angrily as he turned and glared at his young companion:
“But ’tis none of your blamed business or mine neither what’s up with the skipper; you didn’t ship for society, did you?”
“That’s right enough, Mr. Brice, but I tell you what ’tis, the men think the captain a little out of trim in the sky-sail. They say he walks about ship at night like a ghost and does queer things. Second day of the storm, the twentieth, in the evening, while it was blowing great guns and ship pitching like she’d stick her nose under forever, I was standin’ by to help Collins at the wheel; we see the skipper come staggering along aft balancing himself careful as a rope walker an a holdin’ a glass of wine in his hand. When he gets to the rail at the stern he holds up high the glass and talks to wind, Davy Jones or somethin’, drinks the wine and hurls the glass to hell and gone into the sea. How’s that, mate? Collins looks at me and shakes his head, and I feels creepy myself.”
For a minute Brice, with red and angry eyes, stared at the second mate, then he burst out in a roar:
“I’ll knock the head off ’er Collins, and marlin spike the rest ’er the bloomin’ sea lawyers in the for’castle if I catch them talkin’ erbout the skipper, and I tell you, Mr. Second Mate, you keep your mouth well shut or you’ll get such ’er keel haulin’ you won’t fergit. Captain Dunlap is no man to projec’k with and he’s mighty rough in er shindy.”
With that closing admonition the first officer turned and climbed the reeling stairs that led to the deck. As he emerged from the companion-way a great wave struck the side of ship heeling her over and hurling the mate against the man who had formed the topic of discussion in the cabin below.
The skipper was wet to the skin; he had thrown aside his oil-skins to enable him to move more nimbly, his face was worn, drawn and almost of leaden hue. Deep lines and the dark circles around his eyes told a story of loss of sleep, fatigue and anxiety. How much of this was due to an aching pain in the heart only Him to whom all things are revealed could know.
Morgan’s story was true. He had described when, how and under what conditions Jack had pledged Lucy in a glass of wine on her wedding day, praying God to send blessings and happiness to his lost love.
Sing sweet mocking birds! Shine genial sun! Bloom fairest flowers of Sunny Florida! Bliss be thine, loved Lucy! Dream not of the ocean’s angry roar! The tempest’s cruel blast!