“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.