The court room was crowded, not only by the casual visitors to such
places, who are ever in search of satisfaction to their morbid curiosity,
but also by the most fashionable of Boston’s elite society.
The preliminary examination in the case of the Commonwealth vs. Walter
Burton was on the docket for hearing that day.
Nearly a month had elapsed since the arrest; all that an unlimited amount
of money could accomplish had been done to ameliorate the terrible
position of the prisoner. More than a million dollars was offered in bail
for the accused, and it was hoped that by a preliminary examination such
a strong probability of the establishment of an alibi could be presented,
that the Court would make an order permitting the acceptance of bail for
the appearance of the accused after the report of the Grand Jury.
Neither old John Dunlap nor Burton’s wife was present. Jack had insisted
that they must not be in the court-room when he was called upon to give
his evidence.
Lieutenant Thomas Maxon, bronzed, stalwart, and serious, sat beside his
friend Jack Dunlap among the witnesses for the defense.
With a face of ghastly white, Jack Dunlap, his arm still in a sling,
stared straight before him, heedless of the stir and flutter around
him while the audience was waiting the appearance of the judge and the
accused.
There was a look of desperate resolve and defiance on Burton’s face as
he entered the court-room between two officers and took his seat at the
counsel table behind the lawyers who appeared for the defense.
The prosecuting attorney proceeded, when the case was called, to present
the case for the Commonwealth with the coldness and emotionless precision
that marks the movements of an expert surgeon as he digs and cuts among
the vitals of a subject on the operating table.
Chapman was much embarrassed and very nervous on the witness stand;
his testimony was fairly dragged from his livid, unwilling lips; he
interjected every doubt and possible suspicion that might weigh against
his evidence and weaken the case of the Commonwealth. When he left the
stand he staggered like one intoxicated as he walked back to his seat
among the witnesses.
When the case of the people was closed, the leading counsel for the
defense, one most learned in the law, arose and, making a few well-chosen
introductory remarks, turned to a bailiff and said,
“Call Captain John Dunlap.”
For the first time in his life Jack Dunlap seemed afraid to look men in
the eyes. Neither glancing right nor left, he strode with a determined
air to the witness stand and took his seat. His face wore the hue of
death. His jaws were so clamped together that they seemed to crush his
teeth between them.
They asked his name, age and occupation and then his whereabout on the
night of the crime for which the prisoner stood accused.
The witness made answer briefly to each of these questions without
removing his gaze from the wall above the heads of the audience, and
seemed collecting himself for an ordeal yet to come.
“Who was with you on board your ship, the ‘Adams,’ that night?” was the
next question of the lawyer for the defense.
“Stop! Do not answer, Jack!” came in clear, commanding tones from the
mouth of the prisoner as he sprang to his feet. His lawyers about him
tried to pull him down into his chair, but he struggled and shook himself
free and stood where all could see him.
Burton looked around him defiantly at the assembled crowd in the
court-room, holding up his hand with palm turned toward Jack, in protest
against his giving answer to the last question. Then, throwing back his
head, he said in a loud and steady voice,
“I must and do protest against this further sacrifice in my behalf on
the part of that noble, generous, grand man on the stand. Already he has
far exceeded the belief of the most credulous in sacrificing himself for
those whom he loves. That I may prevent this last and grandest offering,
the honor of that brave man, I tell you all that I am guilty of the
crime as charged, and further, I hurl into your teeth the fact that by
your accursed affectation of social equality between the White and Negro
races, which can never exist, you are responsible in part for my crime,
and you are wholly answerable for much agony to the most innocent and
blameless of mortals on earth. Your canting, maudlin, sentimental cry of
social intercourse between the races has caused wrong, suffering, sorrow,
crime, and now causes my death.”
As Burton ceased speaking he swiftly threw a powder between his lips and
quickly swallowed it.
The audience, judge, lawyers, bailiffs, all sat still, chained in a
trance of astonishment as the accused man uttered this unexpected
phillipic against a sometime tradition of New England, and likewise
pronounced his guilt by this open and voluntary confession.
None seemed to realize that the prisoner’s speech was also his
valedictory to life, until they saw him reel, and, ere the nearest man
could reach him, fall, face downward, upon the court-room floor, dead.
Like the last ray of the setting sun, Burton’s expiring speech and deed
had been the parting gleam of the nobility begotten by the blood of the
superior race within his veins, and reflected on the bright surface of
the civilization and culture of the white race. The predominance of
animalism in the negro nature precludes the possibility of suicide in
even the extremest cases of conscious debasement. Suicide is almost
unknown among the negro race.
* * * * *
“Chapman found dead at his desk in the office! My God! What more must I
bear in my old age! Oh! God, have mercy upon an old man!”
Poor old John Dunlap fell upon Jack’s shoulder and wept from very
weakness and misery, and so the sailor supported and held him until the
paroxysm of wretchedness had passed; then he gently led the broken old
gentleman to the easiest chair in the parlor of the Dunlap house and
begged him to sit down and compose his overwrought feelings.
“You say, Jack, that the porter found him seated at his desk this
morning; that he thought he was sleeping, as my faithful employee’s head
rested on his arms, and that it was only when he touched him and noticed
how cold he was that he realized that Chapman was dead. My God! How
awful!” groaned the distressed speaker.
“Yes, sir, and when the head clerks of the different departments
arrived and raised him they saw lying on his desk before him ready for
publication the notice of the closing of the business career of the house
of J. Dunlap, and they took from the dead man’s stiffened fingers the
long record of the firm to which he clung even in death.”
“I saw the poor fellow’s face grow pale and his features twitch as if in
pain when I told him that the career of our house was ended. I urged him
to rest here until he was better, but he only shook his head and hurried
from my presence.”
Mr. Dunlap spoke sadly and after a pause of several minutes, during which
an expression of deepest melancholy settled over his countenance, he
continued sorrowfully,
“Poor David Chapman, good and faithful servant! He loved the old house
of ‘J. Dunlap’ with all of his soul, and when he knew that the end had
come, it broke that intense heart of his.”
“Why did you determine, sir, to take the old sign down, and close those
doors that for two hundred years have stood open every day except
holidays?” asked Jack, full of sympathy for the grief-stricken kinsman
beside him.
“I cannot bear the sight of my loved boyhood’s home, dear old Boston, at
present. It has been the scene of so much agony and horror for me within
the past year that I must, for my own sake, get away from the agonizing
associations all about me here. Lucy absolutely must be taken away now
that her mind is restored to its normal condition, or she will surely go
mad from weeping and grieving. As soon as she is able to travel we shall
go to Europe to be absent months,—years. I am an old man, maybe I shall
never see Boston again.” The old man stopped to choke back a sob and then
said,
“It is hard, very hard, on me that I should be obliged to close the house
my brother James loved so well, and that has been a glory to the Dunlap
name for two centuries. It may break my heart, too, lad.”
The white head sunk on the heaving chest and an audible sob now shook the
bended frame. Jack watched his good godfather with manly tears filling
his honest eyes. Then, laying his hand softly on the old man’s arm, he
said,
“Cousin John, would you feel less wretched if I promised to leave the
sea, and do my best to keep the old sign, ‘J. Dunlap,’ in its place in
the crooked street where it has hung for two hundred years?”
John Dunlap raised his head almost as soon as his namesake began to
speak, and when Jack had finished he had him around the neck and was
hugging the sturdy sailor, crying all the time,
“God bless you, boy! Will you do that for your old kinsman? Will you,
lad?” And then wringing Jack’s hand he cried,
“A young J. Dunlap succeeds the old; all the ships, trade and the capital
remain as before! You and Lucy are sole heirs to everything! The chief
clerks will shout for joy to know that the house still goes on; they will
help you faithfully for love of my brother James and me. And oh! Jack,
when I am far away it will make my heart beat easier to know that the
Dunlap red ball barred with black still floats upon the ocean, and that
the old sign is still here; that I was not the one of my long line to
take it from its place.”