The ghosts of their ancestors

Chapter Three

he glimmering lantern which the serving-maid Betty carried seemed like a huge firefly come back to a land of blooms. Sometimes in dim alleyways it caught in her flapping garments, and her two mistresses were forced to cling together until they reached the next patch of moonlight. When their half-tasted dinner was finished, and the silver counted and locked in the cherry cabinet, Georgina commanded her sister to step over with her to the mansion. Jonathan never permitted the family vehicle to be brought out when the world was not looking, and his womenkind were used to tramping through the darkness. Julie was reluctant to go at first, but the other's anger flamed so high she could not help catching some of the sparks.

"Would you allow your niece to ruin her life by marrying a man who gains his livelihood playing a musical instrument? Methinks you have a fondness for hornpipers and such. There was Signor Succhi, our dancing-master, I recollect"—nodding her head—"he used to call you 'little peach-blossom'—his little peach-blossom!"

Julie smiled at Georgina's latest feat of memory; then she turned about and gazed into the dying embers. For a moment she stood beside a merry-eyed youth who dared her to prick the signor's silken calves. Did he really perfect their symmetry with cotton as was said, she wondered? Alas, that she was born timorous.

"Are your wits leaving you, Jerusalem?" continued the other—"you who wear Aunt Jane's hair locket and have been for years an ornament in the highest sphere of this city—now being ruined by Trentonians and other foreigners. Where is your boasted allegiance to those of your family who have gone before you?"

Threatened and cajoled by turns Miss Julie was led into the night. "The Snograss woman may have lied," came the consoling thought. She cheered herself with it hurrying through the snow.

Up Church Street they stumbled past huts and houses. Warm windows beckoned to them. Georgina had forgotten the mittens for her nieces. The scene at the Snograss House was uppermost in her mind. "What a sly minx Patricia is to have kept the disgraceful affair from us so long," she was thinking. "Could that skulking Juma have helped her? He knew enough to bamboozle one. There was a report that old Roberta Johnstone even read him novels." The boisterous wind, tossing the budding lilac branches about the statues in the Knickerbocker garden which the girl in the window-seat was watching, came shrieking out of unexpected openings and buffeted her aunts in the face.

Now they were entering the narrow passage that opened into Vesey Street. The tavern lights twinkled beyond, but drear and lonely the artery for cut-throats appeared.

Georgina, brave and intrepid, was still nursing her wrath when a mist came before her eyes. "I see! I feel queer!" she cried. Her companions were shaking like autumn leaves. "Oh, don't pause, sister!" squeaked terrified Julie, "here's where that picaroon in the black mask was wont to hide. A Dick Turpin may be concealed yonder!"

"Hist!" called Georgina, as if speaking to some vermin of the night. A shadowy mocking face was rising up before her. She began to tremble—where had she seen it? Yes, 'twas the face of the ancestress whose portrait Jonathan took down from the line of Knickerbockers in the parlor. "My nerves," she gasped. "Come, let us haste, you trembling fools!" Once in the driveway to the house she denied her fright. Betty was scolded for stumbling over a brier-bush. When the long flight of steps was reached, she rushed at them boldly. "Knock, Jerusalem," she commanded.

The little woman tried to sound the clapper, then fell back exhausted. Georgina, enraged, seized it and thumped violently upon the plate. The sounds reverberated through the night, clashing against the bell-notes and the sound of the swaying elms.

Jonathan and his daughters sprang from their seats. The Santa Cruz invoices slipped to the floor and fluttered after the wool balls like merchants aspiring to new possessions. What cared the horn of plenty on the door for the profits of the Fleet Sally? It had watched the ebb and flow of lordlier fortunes. "That ear-splitting bell hubbub—and now visitors," said the master, advancing to his offspring as if they were the cause of this new annoyance.

Juma, already half-drunk with dreams, rubbed his dazed head and hastened toward the entry. Was Toussaint calling him? Did the chair of Marie du Buc de Marcinelle, the Elizabethtown beauty, pause before the hair-dresser's sign? Then time and place came back. Realizing that he was watched, he drew the great bolt with a show of strength, and in bounded the gale-blown humanity.

"You?" queried the head of the Knickerbockers. That was the only greeting he gave his nearest relations on Easter eve. He glanced at Julie to see whether she secreted any packages about her person.

Georgina, entering the room, her face stern and white, said, eyeing him, "Prepare yourself for a shock."

He returned the challenge.

Had she been tampering with her five-per-cents for Peruvian investments? Was it the old plaint—Jerusalem's frivolity? Why did the woman gaze at him so mournfully?

"Prepare yourself," she continued, her voice rising to a shriek. "Patricia—your Patricia—has disgraced us!"

The girl peering from the landing heard her name called. Her secret was known to the world and would soon be an implement of torture. The arbutus fell from her bodice unheeded. She could not meet that cruel group below!

"Richard," sighed the stray gusts of wind on the staircase; "Richard" chimed the patient clock. She crept closer to the baluster railing. Some mysterious force was guiding—impelling her onward. Out of the shadows flashed a face. Like a smile it vanished. She ran to the steps. For a moment she stood silent, gaining courage to descend.

At the very moment when she had glanced back tremblingly for a parting benediction from the stars, a figure wrapped in a great-coat was hurrying out of the Sheridan garden. It was Patricia's lover. The youth often came to gaze at her home after sleep locked all the doors of the world but the dream door for which he had never yet found a key. Then the daytime's barriers were broken and she was his alone. Under the Knickerbocker elm-trees he would stand, sometimes, a wild, impassioned troubadour, aflame with songs of love for his imprisoned mate. Again she came to him a vision pure and ethereal and he folded her to his heart in memory of one perfect Junetime day—while multitudes of roses shed their fragrant petals and birds trilled a divine chorus. To-night, with the wondrous Easter peace upon him, she seemed to walk by his side. Those bell-notes drifting on the air were the music of their lives. Hand in hand they floated on the flow of the darkness. Through the days—and the years. Through the springs—and the summers. Always together! Little forms clutched their knees. Carking care crept out of black coverts. Death beckoned to them in the distance—still, there was the scent of Junetime roses. Ah, God! those roses of love, they were theirs for all eternity!

As he neared Knickerbocker Mansion his mood changed. The bells were dying away again. Old Jenkins up in the steeple above the lights of the drowsy city was letting his metal children rest. Their task would soon be over, for the faithful moss-hung clock already pointed to the nightcap hour. The rushes in the poorer regions near the waste lands were flickering out—only the gentry street was still aglow.

A flock of snow-sparrows caught by the gale dashed past the youth, chattering bird imprecations. Beyond, in the moonlight, loomed Her dwelling-place. Coldly white and dreary it looked. Everything about it was mute and unaware of the joyous night. Did Juma keep his promise and give her the arbutus? A longing thrilled him to know her thoughts at this hour. Were they of him? He hastened into the carriage-path, following the footprints made by the trio from Goby House. The leaden statues leered at him in the spaces between the evergreens. Bare shrubs sighed their gusty dirges at his heels.

At the lordly flight of steps he paused and hesitated. Then her pleading voice seemed to rise on the wind. A strange intuition swayed him. The great door of the mansion was moving, opening inward. He asked himself if he were going stark mad, as he crept to it softly, like a thief.

A cry met his ears, and he staggered back—"I love him! I shall love him always!" came the words.

"Patricia," he whispered breathlessly.

Before him was the dismal length of the hall that he had never hoped to enter. Slowly he reeled forward.

While her lover was coming to her through the night, the girl was descending the staircase. At the bottom she paused and remained very still. From the room beyond an army of candle rays was slipping underneath the green sarcenet curtain and capering gnome-like about her feet. They were waiting for her in there! A prowling rat scampered down the dark passage. In another moment she would stand before her indignant family. The curtain shifted and shadows chased away the light. Behind the awful thing were their watchful eyes. She began to tremble and stretch out her hands imploringly at the space before it. The courage that had brought her so near to the chamber of judgment was fast vanishing when Juma came slowly out of the pantry. He did not speak, but his sad old eyes rested on her lovingly. Stifled sobs shook her slender frame as she nestled close to him, seeking the help that he was powerless to give. A wilder gust of wind blew the neglected spray of arbutus from the landing above and it fell at her feet like a message. She looked at it a moment, then slowly parted the veil of the inevitable. The eyes she feared were now upon her.

Jonathan, choleric with indignation, stood by his desk, clenching his hands. At the sight of the child whose conduct swept aside every Knickerbocker law his rage overflowed, and the room was full of a torrent of 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 weird gurgles with their throats. Several times they almost interrupted their parent. As for Georgina, her high-built hair shook like a barrister's wig in 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 that catamount Trenton woman, envious of your aunts' reputation. Speak, girl! Is it true that the town has seen you keeping trysts with him at the Battery? 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 had neglected to shut, swept the chimney piece and ended the life of a candle.

"Look!" said Jonathan dragging his daughter by the arms, and pointing to the portraits along the wall. "You are the first to disgrace them! They were as fine a line of men and women as was ever bred up in America. Think you they stepped down from their high places for silly fancies? Think you they forgot they were born to superior circumstances and sullied their reputations?"

Here the autocrat of York's voice broke slightly. The same ghostly face that had appeared to Miss Georgina in Cut-throat Alley leered at him suddenly, and he recoiled. Aghast, he remembered the painting under the attic eaves!

Patricia was facing him. The word love was in his ears. With a maddened cry he advanced quivering. Along the films of the air he saw his ancestors as he often pictured them to himself—a fine mass of superior clay on a pedestal.

"You shall give him up!" he thundered. Then he turned. The green sarcenet curtain moved ominously, and the form of Richard Sheridan was disclosed in its folds.

The youth, heedless of the frowning faces about him, gazed only at the woman he was ready to die for if need were. The passions of the world were swept away as the echo of her cry "I love him—I shall love him always!"—bounded through his heart. For one harmonious moment they gazed into each other's eyes forgetful of surging discords. With stronger grip he 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—to dare come here! I'll better your judgment." As he moved nearer Richard she thrust herself before him.

From the corner of the room came a wail from Julie. "Oh, don't be hard on them, Jonathan. You helped father make me give up Captain MacLeerie," she faltered. "I might have been Mrs. Captain MacLeerie! Poor Bodsey—he vowed he'd never sail a ship into Amboy Harbor again—and perhaps the cannibals have him now, or the devil fishes!"

She began to weep softly. Outside a heavy oaken shutter clanked against the house. Patricia threw her arms about her lover's neck, and her father gazed 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 one of us!"

The girl, supported by the man to whom she was giving her young life, and followed by the trembling negro, crept slowly away.

Whiffs of air increasing to a current swept from out the hall. The remaining lights fought with it—then despaired. A tired moon was slumbering behind the western pines, and only the glow of a few watchful stars dripped through the casements.

Simultaneously the breaths of every one in the room came faster and faster. Vapors wan and tinged with dust filled the atmosphere, and an unmistakable odor of sandal-wood, faint from long imprisonment.

The startled Knickerbockers retreated to the walls, knocking over chairs and tables in their flight. Before the green sarcenet curtain which had played such a part in the affairs of the night there was a waft of airy garments. A white weft of towering hair—black, burning eyes. Three Knickerbockers knew them! The lady of the banished portrait was moving through the doorway and speaking in quaint last-century utterance.

"Come back!" she called to the lovers, speaking to Patricia. "'Tis a weary while I have been in the other world, but your sore need has brought me here on the anniversary of the birth of love. I am your great-great-grandmother, who felt the full force of the pretty passion and stole away with my dear heart from yonder theatre in old John Street—a grain house in your time, so one from York who recently joined us informed me.

"The lady of the banished portrait was moving through the doorway"

"Although my likeness does not hang in the family line, I bear you small malice. I get a surfeit of their society." Here the ghost sighed, and with the saddest air possible tapped her empty snuffbox and went through the act of inhaling a reviving pinch of strong Spanish. "This girl who has the bloom of me I would befriend, and as the greatness of your ancestors is all that stands in the way of a marriage with the man of her choice, I have bid them come to meet you and get their opinions, mayhap."

A tremor went through the room! More unearthly visitants? The flesh was creeping on the bones of all the living Knickerbockers!

"They are waiting for us in Lady Knickerbocker's state-room yonder—Sir William tried to kiss me there once after a junket," she continued. "He would 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 a shadowy hand on his. Once past the door ledge she began the descent of the hall as if footing the air of some ancient melody. With grim, rebellious face the present head of her house moved with her, apparently against his own volition.

By the one brightly floriated mirror she straightened her osprey plumes and 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 blown by the wind, whose diabolical wailing reverberated through the house. Doors and windows raged and rattled. There were stridulous, uncanny groans from quaking beams. Behind the panels adown the hall rose and swelled the confused murmur of many voices. The echoes of long dead years were reviving. Above them all was a dying requiem of bells, tolling low and mournfully like a warning to belated road-farers that the ghosts of the haughty Knickerbockers were seeking earth again.

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