Blood Will Tell. The Strange Story of a Son of Ham

I.

Boston was shrouded in a mantle of mist that November day, the north-east wind bringing at each blast re-enforcement to the all-enveloping and obscuring mass of gloom that embraced the city in its arms of darkness.

Glimmering like toy candles in the distance, electric lights, making halos of the fog, marked a pathway for the hurrying crowds that poured along the narrow, crooked streets of New England’s grand old city. In one of the oldest, narrowest and most crooked thoroughfares down near the wharfs a light burning within the window of an old-fashioned building brought to sight the name “J. Dunlap” and the words “Shipping and Banking.”

No living man in Boston nor the father of any man in Boston had ever known a day when passing

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 that old house the sign had not been there for him to gaze upon and lead him to wonder if the Dunlap line would last unbroken forever.

In early days of the Republic some Dunlap had in a small way traded with the West Indian islands, especially Haiti, and later some descendant of this old trade pathfinder had established a regular line of sailing ships between Boston and those islands. Then it was that the sign “J. Dunlap, Shipping and Banking” made its appearance on the front of the old house. A maxim of the Dunlap family had been that there must always be a J. Dunlap, hence sons were ever christened John, James, Josiah and such names only as furnished the everlasting J as the initial.

“J. Dunlap” had grown financially and commercially in proportion to the growth of the Republic. There was not room on a single line in the Commercial Agency books to put A’s enough to express the credit and financial resources of “J. Dunlap” on this dark November day. Absolutely beyond the shoals and shallows of the dangerous shore of trade where small crafts

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 financially are forced to ply, “J. Dunlap” sailed ever tranquil and serene, neither jars nor shocks disturbing the calm serenity of the voyage.

This dismal November day marked an unparalleled experience in the career of the present “J. Dunlap.” The customary calm was disturbed. J. Dunlap disagreed and disagreed positively with J. Dunlap concerning an important event, and that event was a family affair.

The exterior of “J. Dunlap” may be dark, grimy, dingy and old, but within all is bright with electric light. Behind glass and wire screens long lines of clerks and accountants bend over desks and busy pens move across the pages of huge ledgers and account books—messengers hurry in and out of two glass partitioned offices. On the door of one is painted “Mr. Burton, Manager;” on the other “Mr. Chapman, Superintendent.”

Separated by a narrow passageway from the main office is a large room, high ceiling, old-fashioned, furnished with leather and mahogany fittings of ancient make, on the door of which are the words, “J. Dunlap, Private Office.” This

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 is the sanctum sanctorum in this temple of trade. Within “J. Dunlap’s” private office before a large grate heaped high with blazing cannel coal two old men are seated in earnest conversation. They are “J. Dunlap.”

Seventy-two years before this November day that enfolded Boston with London-like fog there were born to one J. Dunlap and his wife twin boys to whom were given in due season the names of James and John. These boys had grown to manhood preserving the same likeness to each other that they had possessed as infants in the cradle. James married early and when his son was born and was promptly made a J. Dunlap, his twin brother vowed that there being a J. Dunlap to secure the perpetuation of the name, he should never marry.

When the J. Dunlap, father of the twin brothers, died, the twins succeeded to the business as well as the other property of their father, share and share alike. To change the name on the office window to Dunlap Bros. was never even dreamed of; such sacrilege would surely have caused the rising in wrath of the long line of

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 ghostly “J. Dunlaps” that had preceded the twins. Hence on this dark day “J. Dunlap” was two instead of one.

Handsome men were all the Dunlaps time out of mind, but no ancestor was ever more handsome than the two clean cut, stalwart, white haired old men who with eager gestures and earnest voices discussed the point of difference between them today.

“My dear brother,” said the one whose face bore traces of a more burning sun than warms the Berkshire hills, “You know that we have never differed even in trivial matters, and James, it is awful to think of anything that could even be called a disagreement, but I loved your poor boy John as much as I have ever loved you and when he died his motherless little girl became more to me than even you, James, and it hurts my heart to think of my darling Lucy being within possible reach of sorrow and shame.” The fairer one of the brothers bent over and grasping with both hands the raised hand of him who had spoken said with an emotion that filled his eyes with moisture:

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“God bless you, John! You dear old fellow! I know that that loving heart of yours held my poor boy as near to it as did my own, and that Lucy has ever been the dearest jewel of your great soul, but your love and tenderness are now conjuring up imaginary dangers that are simply beyond a possibility of existence. While I will not go so far as to admit that had I known that there was a trace of negro blood in Burton I should have forbidden his paying court to my granddaughter, still I will confess that I should have considered that fact and consulted with you before consenting to his seeking Lucy’s hand. However, it is too late now, John. He has won our girl’s heart and knowing her as you do you must appreciate the consequences of the disclosure of this discovery and the abrupt termination of her blissful anticipations. It is not only a question of the health and happiness of our dear girl, but her very life would be placed in jeopardy.”

This seemed an unexpected or unrealized phase of the situation to the first speaker, for he made no reply at once but sat with troubled

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 brow gazing into the fire for several minutes, then with a sigh so deep that it was almost a groan, exclaimed:

“Oh! that I had known sooner! I am an old fool! I might have suspected this and investigated Burton’s family. John Dunlap, d——n you for the old idiot that you are,” and rising he began pacing the floor; his brother watched him with eyes of tender, almost womanly affection until a suspicious moisture dimmed the sight of his worried second self. Going to him and taking him by the arm he joined him in his walk back and forth through the room, saying:

“John, don’t worry yourself so much old chap, there is nothing to fear; what if there be a slight strain of negro blood in Burton? It will disappear in his descendants and even did Lucy know all that you have learned, she loves him and would marry him anyhow. You know her heart and her high sense of justice. She would not blame him and really it is no fault of his.”

“You say,” broke in his brother, “that the negro blood will disappear in Burton’s descendants? That is just what may not happen! Both in the

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 United States and Haiti I have seen cases of breeding back to the type of a remote ancestor where negro blood, no matter how little, ran in the veins of the immediate ancestor. In the animal kingdom see the remoteness of the five toed horse, yet even now sometimes a horse is born with five toes. Man is but an animal of the highest grade.”

“Well, even granting what you say about the remote possibility of breeding back, you know that our ancestors years ago stood shoulder to shoulder with Garrison, Beecher and those grand heroes who maintained that the enslavement of the negro was a crime, and that the color of the skin made no difference—that all men were brothers and equal.”

“Yes, I know and agree with our forefathers in all of that,” exclaimed the sun burned J. Dunlap with some show of impatience. “But while slavery was all wrong and equality before the law is absolutely right, still I have seen both in this country and in the West Indies such strange evidence of the inherent barbarism in the negro race that I am almost ready to paraphrase a

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 saying of Napoleon and declare, ‘Scratch one with negro blood in him and you find a barbarian.’”

“Your long residence in disorderly Haiti, where your health and our interest kept you has evidently prejudiced you,” replied the fair J. Dunlap. “Remember that for generations our family has extended the hospitality of our homes to those of negro blood provided they were educated, cultured people.”

“Yes, James, Yes! Provided they had the culture and education created by the white man, and to be frank between ourselves, James, there has been much affectation about the obliteration of race distinction even in the case of our own family, and you know it! We Dunlaps have made much of our apparent liberality and consistency, but in our hearts we are as much race-proud Aryans as those ancestors who drove the race-inferior Turanians out of Europe.”

James Dunlap was as honest as his more impetuous brother. Suddenly stopping and confronting him with agitated countenance, he said: “You are right, John, in what you say about

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 our affecting social equality with those of negro blood. God knows had I been aware of the facts that you have hastened from Port au Prince to lay before me all might have been different; our accursed affectation may have misled Burton, who is an honorable gentleman, no matter if his mother was a quadroon. Social equality may be all right, but where it leads to the intermarriage of the races all the Aryan in me protests against it, but it is too late and we must trust to Divine Providence to correct the consequences of the Dunlap’s accursed affectation.”

“I expected Lucy to marry Jack Dunlap, the son of our cousin; then the old sign might have answered for another hundred years. Lucy and Jack were fond of each other always, and I thought when two years ago I left Boston for Haiti that the match was quite a settled affair. Why did you not foster a marriage that would have been so satisfactory from every standpoint?”

“I did hope that Lucy would marry your namesake, dear brother; don’t blame me; while I believe that the boy was really fond of my granddaughter, still, being poor, and having the

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 Dunlap pride he positively declined the position in our office that I offered him. I wished to keep him near Lucy and to prepare him to succeed us as ‘J. Dunlap.’ When I made the offer he said in that frank, manly, sailor man fashion of his that he was worthless in an office and he wished no sinecure by reason of being our kinsman; that he was a sailor by nature and loved the sea; that he wished to make his own way in the world; that if we could fairly advance him in his profession he would thank us, but that was all that he could accept at our hands.”

“See that now!” exclaimed the listener. “Blood will tell. The blood of some old Yankee sailor man named Dunlap spoke when our young kinsman made that reply. Breed back! Yes indeed we do.”

“No persuasion could move the boy from the position he had taken and as he held a master’s certificate and had proven a careful mate I gave him command of our ship ‘Lucy’ in the China trade. I imagine there was some exhibition of feeling at the parting of Lucy and John, as my girl seemed much depressed in spirits after he left.

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“You recall how Walter Burton came to us fifteen years ago with a letter from his father, our correspondent in Port au Prince, saying that he wished his son to enter Harvard and asking us to befriend him. The lad was handsome and clever and we never dreamed of his being other than of pure blood. He was graduated at the head of his class, brilliant, amiable, fascinating. Our house was made bright by his frequent visits.

“When his father died, leaving his great wealth to Walter, he begged to invest it with us, and liking the lad we were glad to have him with us. Beginning at the bottom, by sheer force of ability and industry, within ten years he has become our manager. I am sure John Dunlap, your namesake, never told Lucy that he loved her before he sailed for China. The pride of the man would hold back such a declaration to our heiress. So with Jack away, his love, if it exist, for Lucy untold, it is not strange that Burton, and he is a most charming man, in constant attendance upon my granddaughter should have won her heart. He is handsome, educated, cultured and wealthy. I could imagine no cause for an objection, so

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 when he asked for Lucy’s hand I assented. The arrangements are completed and they will be married next month. Lucy wished you to witness the ceremony and wrote you and you hasten from Haiti home with this unpleasant discovery. Now, John, think of Lucy and tell me, brother, what your heart says is our duty.”

James Dunlap, exhausted by the vehement earnestness that he had put into this long speech, recounting the events and circumstances that had led up to the approaching marriage of his granddaughter, dropped into one of the large armchairs near the fire, waiting for a reply, while his brother continued his nervous tramp across the room.

Silence was finally disturbed by a light knock on the door and a messenger entered, saying that Captain Dunlap begged permission to speak with the firm a few moments. When the name was announced the two brothers exchanged glances that seemed to say, “The man I was thinking of.”

“Show him in, of course,” cried John Dunlap, eagerly stopping in his monotonous pacing up and down the room.

The door opened again and there entered the

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 room a man of about twenty-seven years of age, rather below the medium height of Americans, but of such breadth of shoulders and depth of chest as to give evidence of unusual physical strength. A sailor, every inch a sailor, anyone could tell, from the top of his curly blonde hair to the sole of his square toed boots. His sunburnt face, while not handsome, according to the ideals of artists, was frank, manly, bold—a brave, square jawed Anglo-Saxon face, with eyes of that steely gray that can become as tender as a mother’s and as fierce as a tiger’s.

“Come in, Jack,” cried both of the old gentlemen together.

“Glad to see you my boy,” added John Dunlap. “How did you find your good mother and the rest of our friends in Bedford? I only landed today; came from Port au Prince to see the Commons once more; heard that the ‘Lucy’ and her brave master, my namesake, had arrived a week ahead of me, safe and sound, from East Indian waters.”

So saying he grasped both of the sailor’s hands and shook them with the genuine cordiality of a lad of sixteen.

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“Have you seen my granddaughter since your return, Captain Jack?” inquired James Dunlap, as he shook the young man’s hand.

“I was so unfortunate as to call when she was out shopping, and as Mrs. Church, the housekeeper, told me that she was so busy preparing for the approaching wedding that she was engaged all the time, I have hesitated to call again,” replied the sailor, as with a somewhat deeper shade of red in his sun burned face he seated himself between the twins.

“Lucy will not thank Mrs. Church for that speech if it is to deprive her of the pleasure of welcoming her old playmate and cousin back to Boston and home. You must come and dine with us tomorrow,” said Lucy’s grandfather.

“I am much obliged for your kind invitation, sir, but if you will only grant the request I am about to make of the firm, my next visit to my cousin will be to say goodby, as well as to receive a welcome home from a voyage.”

“Why, what do you mean, lad!” exclaimed both of the brothers simultaneously.

Concealment or deception was probably the

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 most difficult of all things for this frank man with the free spirit of the sea fresh in his soul, so that while he answered the color surged up stronger and stronger in his face until the white brow, saved from the sun by his hat, was as red as his close shaven cheeks.

“Well, sir, this is what I mean. I learned yesterday that the storm we encountered crossing the Atlantic coming home had strained my ship so badly that it will be two months before she is out of the shipwright’s hands.”

“What of that, Jack,” broke in the darker J. Dunlap. “Take a rest at home. I know your mother will be delighted, and speaking from a financial standpoint, as you know, it makes not the least difference.”

“I was going to add, sir, that this morning I learned that Captain Chadwick of your ship ‘Adams,’ now loaded and ready to sail for Australia, was down with pneumonia and could not take the ship out, and that there was some difficulty in securing a master that filled the requirements of your house. I therefore applied to Mr. Burton for the command of the ‘Adams,’ but he

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 absolutely refused to consider the application saying that as I had been away for almost two years, that it would be positively brutal to even permit me to go to sea again so soon, and that the ‘Adams’ might stay loaded and tied to the dock ten years rather than I should leave home so speedily.”

“Burton is exactly right, I endorse every word he has said. You can’t have the ‘Adams’!” said James Dunlap with emphasis. “What would Martha Dunlap, your mother, and our dear cousin’s widow, think if we robbed her of her only son so soon after his return from a long absence from home?”

“My mother knows, sir, that my stay at home will be very brief. She expects me to ask to go to sea again almost immediately. I told her all about it when I first met her upon my return,” and as he spoke the shipmaster’s gaze was never raised from the nautical cap that he held in his hand.

“Well! You are not going to sea again immediately, that is all about it. You have handled the ‘Lucy’ for two years, away from home, using

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 your own judgment, in a manner that, even were you not our kinsman, would entitle you to a long rest at the expense of our house as grateful shipowners,” said Lucy’s grandfather.

The young man giving no heed to the compliment contained in the remarks made by James Dunlap, but looking up and straight into the eyes of the brother just arrived from Haiti, said so earnestly that there could be no question of his purpose:

“I wish to get to sea as soon as possible. If I cannot sail in the ‘Adams,’ much as I dislike to leave you, sirs, I must seek other employ.”

“The devil you will!” exclaimed his godfather angrily.

“Why, if you sail now you will miss your cousin’s wedding and disappoint her,” added James Dunlap.

“Again, gentlemen, I say that I shall get to sea within a few days. I either go in the ‘Adams’ or seek other employ,” and all the time he was speaking not once did the sailor remove his steady gaze from the eyes of him for whom he was named.

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To say that the Dunlap brothers were astonished is putting it too mildly; they were amazed. The master of a Dunlap ship was an object of envy to every shipmaster out of Boston—the pay and employ was the best in America—that a kinsman and master should even propose to leave their employ was monstrous. In amazement both of the old gentlemen looked at the young man in silence.

Suddenly as old John Dunlap looked into young John Dunlap’s honest eyes he read something there, for first leaning forward in his chair and gazing more intently into the gray eyes of the sailor, he sprang to his feet and grasping the arm of his young kinsman he fairly hauled him to the window at the other end of the room, then facing him around so that he could get a good look at his face, he almost whispered:

“Jack, when did you learn first that Lucy was to be married?”

“When I came ashore at Boston one week ago.”

The answer came so quickly that the question must have been read in the eyes of the older man before uttered.

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“I thought so,” said the old man softly and sadly, as he walked, still holding the sailor by the arm, back to the fire, and added as he neared his brother:

“James, Jack wants the ‘Adams’ and is in earnest. I can’t have him leave our employ; therefore he must go as master of that ship.”

“But, brother, think of it,” exclaimed James Dunlap.

“There is no but about it, James, I wish him to sail in our ship, the ‘Adams,’ as master. I understand his desire and endorse his wish to get to sea.”

“Oh! Of course if you really are in earnest just instruct Burton in the premises, but Jack must dine with us tomorrow and see Lucy or she will never forgive him or me.”

“Don’t you see that the lad has always loved Lucy, is heartbroken over her marriage and wants to get away before the wedding?” cried John Dunlap, as he turned after closing the door upon Captain Jack’s departing figure.

“What a blind old fool I am not to have seen or thought of that!” exclaimed his brother.

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“How I wish in my soul it was our cousin that my girl was going to marry instead of Burton, but it is too late, too late.”

Sadly the darker Dunlap brother echoed the words of Lucy’s grandfather, as he sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands:

Too late! Too late! Too late!


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II.