judgment was fast vanishing when Juma cameslowly out of the pantry. He did not speak, but his sad old eyes rested onher lovingly. Stifled sobs shook her slender frame as she nestled close tohim, seeking the help that he was powerless to give. A wilder gust of windblew the neglected spray of arbutus from the landing above and it fell ather feet like a message. She looked at it a moment, then slowly parted theveil of the inevitable. The eyes she feared were now upon her.
Jonathan, choleric with indignation, stood by his desk, clenching hishands. At the sight of the child whose conduct swept aside everyKnickerbocker law his rage overflowed, and the room was full of a torrentof reproaches. Once he came near knocking over a bust of Mr. Washington,the property of a Makemie, and Miss Julie gave a slight scream.
Patricia heard him silently. She was calmer than any of the spectators.The other Mansion girls continually slid off their chairs and made weirdgurgles with their throats. Several times they almost interrupted theirparent. As for Georgina, her high-built hair shook like a barrister's wigin the heat of a court appeal.
"You have disgraced us--a common follower fit for a tire-woman! Yes, miss,in your veins flows the Knickerbocker blood, though I cannot credit it.Say 'tis a lie ere I turn you out. Say 'tis the fabrication of thatcatamount Trenton woman, envious of your aunts' reputation. Speak, girl!Is it true that the town has seen you keeping trysts with him at theBattery? Speak!" gasped the worthy man.
"It is true," said Patricia, trying to keep herself strong for battle.
The draught from the half opened door, which Juma in his excitement hadneglected to shut, swept the chimney piece and ended the life of a candle.
"Look!" said Jonathan dragging his daughter by the arms, and pointing tothe portraits along the wall. "You are the first to disgrace them! Theywere as fine a line of men and women as was ever bred up in America. Thinkyou they stepped down from their high places for silly fancies? Think youthey forgot they were born to superior circumstances and sullied theirreputations?"
Here the autocrat of York's voice broke slightly. The same ghostly facethat had appeared to Miss Georgina in Cut-throat Alley leered at himsuddenly, and he recoiled. Aghast, he remembered the painting under theattic eaves!
Patricia was facing him. The word love was in his ears. With a maddenedcry he advanced quivering. Along the films of the air he saw his ancestorsas he often pictured them to himself--a fine mass of superior clay on apedestal.
"You shall give him up!" he thundered. Then he turned. The green sarcenetcurtain moved ominously, and the form of Richard Sheridan was disclosed inits folds.
The youth, heedless of the frowning faces about him, gazed only at thewoman he was ready to die for if need were. The passions of the world wereswept away as the echo of her cry "I love him--I shall love himalways!"--bounded through his heart. For one harmonious moment they gazedinto each other's eyes forgetful of surging discords. With stronger griphe clutched at the curtain!
"You, sirrah!" scoffed the voice Patricia thought would go on forever,inflicting fresh wounds at each new outburst. "Impudent organ thumper--todare come here! I'll better your judgment." As he moved nearer Richard shethrust herself before him.
From the corner of the room came a wail from Julie. "Oh, don't be hard onthem, Jonathan. You helped father make me give up Captain MacLeerie," shefaltered. "I might have been Mrs. Captain MacLeerie! Poor Bodsey--he vowedhe'd never sail a ship into Amboy Harbor again--and perhaps the cannibalshave him now, or the devil fishes!"
She began to weep softly. Outside a heavy oaken shutter clanked againstthe house. Patricia threw her arms about her lover's neck, and her fathergazed at her spellbound with fury.
"Disgraced us, hussy," he muttered. "Go with your tinker!"
Juma fell on his knees and began to lament after the fashion of his kind.
"Begone!"--spoke the voice again, breaking at last--"You are no longer oneof us!"
The girl, supported by the man to whom she was giving her young life, andfollowed by the trembling negro, crept slowly away.
Whiffs of air increasing to a current swept from out the hall. Theremaining lights fought with it--then despaired. A tired moon wasslumbering behind the western pines, and only the glow of a few watchfulstars dripped through the casements.
Simultaneously the breaths of every one in the room came faster andfaster. Vapors wan and tinged with dust filled the atmosphere, and anunmistakable odor of sandal-wood, faint from long imprisonment.
The startled Knickerbockers retreated to the walls, knocking over chairsand tables in their flight. Before the green sarcenet curtain which hadplayed such a part in the affairs of the night there was a waft of airygarments. A white weft of towering hair--black, burning eyes. ThreeKnickerbockers knew them! The lady of the banished portrait was movingthrough the doorway and speaking in quaint last-century utterance.
"_The lady of the banished portrait was moving through thedoorway_"]
"Come back!" she called to the lovers, speaking to Patricia. "'Tis a wearywhile I have been in the other world, but your sore need has brought mehere on the anniversary of the birth of love. I am yourgreat-great-grandmother, who felt the full force of the pretty passion andstole away with my dear heart from yonder theatre in old John Street--agrain house in your time, so one from York who recently joined us informedme.
"Although my likeness does not hang in the family line, I bear you smallmalice. I get a surfeit of their society." Here the ghost sighed, and withthe saddest air possible tapped her empty snuffbox and went through theact of inhaling a reviving pinch of strong Spanish. "This girl who has thebloom of me I would befriend, and as the greatness of your ancestors isall that stands in the way of a marriage with the man of her choice, Ihave bid them come to meet you and get their opinions, mayhap."
A tremor went through the room! More unearthly visitants? The flesh wascreeping on the bones of all the living Knickerbockers!
"They are waiting for us in Lady Knickerbocker's state-room yonder--SirWilliam tried to kiss me there once after a junket," she continued. "Hewould not come to-night--I fear he was afraid it would be dull."
She moved over to Jonathan, who was speechless from fright, and laid ashadowy hand on his. Once past the door ledge she began the descent of thehall as if footing the air of some ancient melody. With grim, rebelliousface the present head of her house moved with her, apparently against hisown volition.
By the one brightly floriated mirror she straightened her osprey plumesand tapped him gently with her fan. "You dance like a footman," she said."Have you go-carts 'neath your feet?"
The trembling file of Knickerbockers followed after them, seemingly blownby the wind, whose diabolical wailing reverberated through the house.Doors and windows raged and rattled. There were stridulous, uncanny groansfrom quaking beams. Behind the panels adown the hall rose and swelled theconfused murmur of many voices. The echoes of long dead years werereviving. Above them all was a dying requiem of bells, tolling low andmournfully like a warning to belated road-farers that the ghosts of thehaughty Knickerbockers were seeking earth again.
_Chapter Four_
As the family neared the long unused state parlor the din grew louder--arising treble of voices, ascending from hoarse trumpet tones to atwittering falsetto, accompanied by a maddening persistent tapping of highheels on the smooth floor. The sounds of shivering glass as a girandolecrashed from its joining met their ears. Each second was a discord runningwild with panic-striking incidents.
Julie grasped frantically at the more stalwart Georgina, while clinging toher own garments were the three Mansion girls, screeching like the town'swhistles in a March twilight.
The ghost little Jerusalem feared the most was that of the stern Judge."Will he know that I have changed my name?" she wailed. "Oh, sister, I ateup those bracelets he gave me for taking treacle. I sold them to asilversmith and bought French prunes. You know you said that you'd as sooneat stewed bull-frogs as anything grown by the Monsieurs, and all York wasstewing prunes!"
Georgi
na never turned her head at this remarkable confession. Her featureshad assumed a strange rigidity; she was as silent as her brother. Theshrieks of her nieces, old Juma's incessant lamentations, and the lowwhispers of the lovers were all unheeded. The racket behind the cobwebbeddoors, never opened but for Knickerbocker weddings and funerals, absorbedher senses. Slowly they were swinging back for Jonathan and his phantompartner. The delicate odor of sandal-wood, was strengthened by gasps ofmusk. Into a yellow blinding glare of light the file of Knickerbockerslooked, and their eyes grew gooseberry-like with horror.
A crowd of shades bedecked in their last earthly garniture were glidingand teetering about; some dignified as at a stately farce, othershilarious with ungraceful levity.
As the living
The ghosts of their ancestors Page 7
