Dunlap

“ Virginia's child was a girl, a sickly baby which cried miserably from the day it was born. The listless, wailing, almost unwilling battle for life that daily went on before his eyes saddened Dunlap profoundly. All his painter's sophistries fell away from him, and more than ever his early destiny seemed closing about him. There was, then, no escaping from the cruelty of physical things—no matter how high and bright the sunshine, how gray and poplar-clad the ways of one's life. ”

“ Dunlap left her quite to herself and thanked God for the tears.
"What shall I do if he comes and demands to be let in?" the girl asked suddenly, looking up at her deliverer. "He is so—so masterful; and he does not look at things as I do. He thinks that a few hours cannot make any difference. I know how he argued it out with himself that he could not leave me alone, and that he would shield my name by giving me his in advance, but I cannot do it, I cannot! And if he comes and insists upon talking to me, I don't know what will become of me. ”

“ Dunlap got away by the noon train and took the night-express for the West, canceling all her engagements for the week; she had more important work to look after. Not telegrams, nor long distance telephones, nor even carefully written letters could serve her now. She must go in person to try to explain, as best she might, to that dear girl who was waiting at home to hear from one to whom she had given her trust, to prove him to her mother as "good and noble!" ”

“ Dear Mrs. Dunlap, I may as well confess that I am awfully proud of my husband!" The sentence had closed with an apologetic laugh.
What a transparent little lady her hostess was! She ought to be very happy, with a husband of whom she was "awfully" proud, a beautiful home crowded with all the luxuries that wealth could produce, and probably not a care in the world!
Mary Dunlap could not resist a little sigh of pity for herself; she was a lonely woman. Her husband and home and child all gone from her. She, too, had been "proud" of her husband with abundant reason; and her beautiful girl. ”

“ Dunlap regretted her words. The terror in the girl's eyes transformed her face; and the low cry she gave was almost like that of a wounded animal! But she rallied rapidly and said with eagerness: "Oh, you are mistaken! It is some other person whose name you have mistaken for his. He would not—why, Rufus could not do such a thing!"
"My dear child, I am not mistaken." The very quietness of the woman's voice and manner carried conviction. ”

“ Dunlap had come from a country where women are hardly used. He had grown up on a farm in the remote mountains of West Virginia, and his mother had died of pneumonia contracted from taking her place at the wash-tub too soon after the birth of a child. When a boy, he had been apprenticed to his grandfather, a country cobbler, who, in his drunken rages, used to beat his wife with odd strips of shoe-leather. The painter's hands still bore the mark of that apprenticeship, and the suffering of the mountain women he had seen about him in his childhood, had left him almost morbidly sensitive. ”

“ Immediately after the decree was granted, Dunlap married Eleanor Vane. He never met or directly heard from Virginia again, though when she returned to Russia and took up her residence in St. Petersburg, the fame of her toilets spread even to Paris.
Society, always prone to crude antitheses, knew of Dunlap only that he had painted many of the most beautiful women of his time, that he had been twice married, and that each of his wives had been disfigured by a scar on the face. ”

“ A slip of a girl, smartly attired in a fur-trimmed dress and a chic little feather-tipped hat, hurried up to Constance Dunlap late one afternoon as she turned the corner below her apartment.
"It isn't faintness or illness exactly—but—it's all so hazy," stammered the girl breathlessly. "And I've forgotten who I am. I've forgotten where I live—and a man has been following me—oh, ever so long." ”

“ I had seen no more of Dunlap, and concluded that he was back in Assuan, or somewhere on the river, foozling with his irrigation again. I never had the clearest conception of the work of his department, by the way. An irrigation man once started to explain to me about his section, mixing up surveying paraphernalia in his talk, telling me something about an allowance of half an inch variation in half a mile of bank, or chat to that effect; but I couldn't quite make it out. My impression of Dunlap at business was very hazy ”

“ There was something in the purring tone of the invitation of the woman across the hall from Constance Dunlap's apartment that aroused her curiosity.
"Thank you. I believe I will," answered Constance. "It's lonely in a big city without friends."
"Indeed it is," agreed Bella LeMar. "I've been watching you for some time and wondering how you stand it. ”

“ Dunlap," she began convulsively, "I hope you will pardon an entire stranger for breaking in on you so informally—but—but I can't—I can't help it. I must tell some one."
Accustomed as she was now to strange confidences, Constance bent over and patted the little hand of Mrs. Noble comfortingly.
"You seemed to take it so coolly," went on the other woman. "For me the glamour, the excitement are worse than champagne. But you could stop, even when you were winning. Oh, my God! What am I to do? What will happen when my husband finds out what I have done!" ”

“ Mrs. Dunlap's voice had never been quieter, nor firmer. "You are going home to her this morning, as soon as the train goes. In a few hours she will have her arms about you. And when you are really being married, she will stand very near you, and be the first to kiss you, and call you her darling. You wouldn't disappoint her for anything! Come with me to my room and wait until train time. There ought to be one very early in the morning, and I will see you safely to it."
The girl seized the little hand bag she had dropped, and spoke hurriedly. ”

“ Mademoiselle Saucier will be at Menard's."
Dr. Dunlap wiped his forehead. He, and not the cool friar, appeared to have been the dancer. A chorus of slaves singing on some neighboring gallery could be heard in the pause of the violin. Beetles, lured by the shop candles, began to explore the room where the two men were, bumping themselves against the walls and buzzing their complaints.
"A man is nothing but a young beast until he is past twenty-five years old," said Dr. Dunlap. ”

“ I don't remember which city he calls 'home'; he is in New York a great deal. He really hasn't much home I presume; an unmarried man, whose parents are dead; it must be very dreary."
"Poor innocent child!" was Mrs. Dunlap's mental comment. "She really knows no more about the man than I do; I'm afraid not so much! For all that she could prove, he might be an adventurer of the sort that is careful not to have a settled home." ”

“ Dunlap and her sister are here, and I shall hear some singing; but they can give no music like the panorama I have seen. I have been choking all day, as I always do when I leave any place or person that is specially beautiful. When I am in the midst of the greatest beauty I remind myself that it is so, but I do not seem to touch the very heart ”

“ Dunlap declares that he never paid his bills in Paris or Philadelphia, that he lived by fraud, and passed his life between a palace and a prison. He had been in 1794 the idol of the literary youth of Philadelphia. In 1815, at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, he was allowed to attempt Lear, but his memory was gone. ”

“ A little errand uptown kept her longer than she expected, but by the late afternoon she was back again at her desk, on which rested a small package which had been delivered by messenger for her.
"I beg you won't think as badly of me as it seems on the surface, Miss Dunlap," remarked Brainard, stopping beside her desk.
"I don't think badly of you," she answered in a low voice. "You are not the only man who has been caught with a crowd of crooks who plan to leave him holding the bag."
"Oh, it isn't that," he hastened, "I mean this Blanche Leblanc affair. May I be frank with you?" ”

“ What a hard road she had set her feet to travel, and how soon she must come to humiliation.
But the mother was shocked into severity. "Marguerite!" she said, sitting bolt upright and looking at her daughter sternly, as she had not looked at nor spoken to her since she was a very little girl, "Marguerite! You forget yourself! You are beside yourself. Apologize at once to Mrs. Dunlap. You do not know what you are doing! Mrs. Dunlap is the best friend you have in this world. She has gone to great inconvenience and expense and trouble to save you from an awful calamity!" ”

“ Behind the delicate pleasure manifested in his treatment of a beautiful face, one could divine the sadness of knowledge, and one felt that the painter had yearned to arrest what was so fleeting and to hold it back from the cruelty of the years. At an exhibition of Dunlap's pictures, the old painter of the Second Empire had said, with a sigh, that he ought to get together all his portraits of young women and call them "Les Fiancées," so abloom were they with the confidence of their beautiful secret. ”

“ Mary Dunlap looked up to see a tall young man standing in the doorway with his hat in his hand, a grave questioning look upon his face. He had keen gray eyes, a crop of nicely groomed reddish curls, and he looked strong and young and dependable.
"Oh, Nelson!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldon, a kind of dazed relief in her voice, "You came to see Daisy about that committee meeting, didn't you? Why—she—she wasn't feeling very well to-night, Nelson. She has retired. She had a headache. She asked me to excuse her." ”

“ From the first, Virginia's interest in the portrait never wavered; yet, as the sittings progressed, it became evident to Dunlap that her enthusiasm for the picture was but accessory to her interest in him. By her every look and action she asserted her feeling, as a woman, young and handsome and independent, may sometimes do.
As time went on, he was drawn to her by what had once repelled him. Her courageous candor appealed to his chivalry, and he came to love her, not despite the scar, but, in a manner, for its very sake. He had some indefinite feeling that love might heal her ”

“ CAPTAIN DUNLAP was a brave man. He had smilingly faced death a dozen times in Granite River Prison.
But always his danger was known to be from living, breathing men. Abject terror gripped him now; a nameless terror that seemed to freeze the blood in his veins, contract every muscle and nerve of his body, smother his heart.
But even then reasoning struggled for recognition in his mind. What if it were a part of Asa Shores, a part of him that remained on earth to defy death and carry on? Hasn’t Asa always been Captain Dunlap’s friend? Why should he fear the spirit of a friend? ”

“ I don't know if he'll have time to see anybody," and she cast a belligerent look toward the newspaper and the legs over in the gloomy alcove.
"Don't worry," said the dominant voice of Mrs. Dunlap pleasantly, "I shall not keep him a second. I merely want him to endorse a check for me. I'm a personal friend. I'll just wait till he comes."
The secretary looked as if she thought that was a doubtful statement, but she assented silently and went on typing. ”

“ Mary Dunlap had told the end of her story rapidly, conscious that her listener was under a heavy strain, and now she looked up with relief that all was told.
But the poor mother had borne all she could. She suddenly drooped and would have fallen if the caller had not put strong arms about her and laid her gently on the couch.
"My dear!" she said as she stooped over the poor sufferer and patted her gently. "My dear! Don't feel so terribly about it. I am sure this part of the story should be a relief, for it certainly puts that man in a position where he dare not touch your daughter again!" ”

“ Oh, the amateur forger may be the most dangerous kind, because the professional regularly follows the same line, leaves tracks, has associates, but," he concluded impressively, "all are caught sooner or later—sooner or later."
Dunlap managed to maintain his outward composure admirably. Still the little lifting of the curtain on the hidden mysteries of the new detective art produced its effect. They were getting closer, and Dunlap knew it, as Drummond intended he should. And, as in every crisis, he turned naturally to Constance. ”

“ Would she have done this if I had been driving oxen, or still worse, those animals which few thought worth anything as draught animals--cows? And then I thought of Flora's lameness the day before yesterday. Was it honest to let Dunlap and Thatcher drive off to liberate the nation with a horse that might go lame?
"Let me have a horse," said I to Preston. "I want to catch them and tell them something."
I rode up behind the Abolitionists' wagon, waving my hat and shouting. They pulled up and waited.
"What's up?" asked Dunlap. "Going with us after all? I hope so, my boy." ”

“ That he earned his living by his pen is a matter of incidental interest in American literary history; the more important facts are that he looms large in the chronicles of the American novel and that he was a factor in the development of the American periodical.
He was born in Philadelphia. “His parents,” says Dunlap, whose whole biography is written with the same labored elevation, “were virtuous, religious people, and as such held a respectable rank in society; and he could trace back a long line of ancestry holding the same honorable station.” ”