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+Project Gutenberg's The ghosts of their ancestors, by Weymer Jay Mills
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The ghosts of their ancestors
+
+Author: Weymer Jay Mills
+
+Illustrator: John Rae
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2011 [EBook #36991]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHOSTS OF THEIR ANCESTORS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Alex Gam, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  _The_ Ghosts
+  _of their_
+  Ancestors
+
+
+  [Illustration: "_Those ancestry books are a standard joke with us_"]
+
+
+  _The_ Ghosts _of
+  their_ Ancestors
+
+  _by Weymer Jay Mills_
+
+  _Author of_
+  "Caroline _of_ Courtlandt Street"
+
+  _Pictures by_ John Rae
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  New York
+  Fox Duffield & Co.
+  1906
+
+
+  Copyright, 1906, by
+  Fox Duffield & Company
+
+  Published, March, 1906
+
+  The Trow Press, N. Y.
+
+
+  [Illustration: To American Ladies & Gentlemen of prodigious Quality]
+
+
+  To
+  _Minerva_
+  and
+  _Virginia_
+
+
+
+
+Pictures
+
+
+  "_Those ancestry books are a standard joke with us_"      Frontispiece
+
+                                                            Facing page
+
+  "_How lovely she is, Juma!_"                              18
+
+  "_My Julie saw them kissing less than an hour ago on the
+    marine parade_"                                         80
+
+  "_The lady of the banished portrait was moving through
+    the doorway_"                                           110
+
+
+
+
+Chapter _One_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+There was a clanging, brassy melody upon the air. For three-score years
+since York of the Scarlet Coats died, and the tune "God Save the King"
+floated for the last time out of tavern door and mansion window, the bells
+of old St. Paul's had begun their ringing like this:
+
+"Loud and full voiced at eight o'clock sends good cheer abroad," said the
+tottering sexton. "Softer and softer, as folks turn into bed, and faint
+and sweet at midnight, when our dear Lord rises with the dawn." Cheery
+bells full of hope--gentle chimes, as if the holy mother were dreaming of
+her babe. Joyous, jingling, jangling bells! Through the town their tones
+drifted, over the thousands of slate-colored roofs, now insistent on the
+Broadway, now lessening a little in some long winding alley, and then
+finally dying away on the bare Lispenard Meadows.
+
+Vesey Street--the gentry street--heard them first. The bigwigs in the long
+ago, with the help of Gracious George, built the church, and who had a
+better right than their children to its voices. Calm and serene lay Vesey
+Street with its rows of leafing elms. Over the dim confusion of
+architectural forms slipped the moonlight in silver ribbons, seeming to
+make sport of the grave, smug faces of the antiquated domiciles. Like a
+line of deserted dowagers waiting for some recalcitrant Sir Roger de
+Coverley, they stood scowling at one another. No longer linkboys and
+running footmen stuck brave lights into the well-painted extinguishers at
+each doorstep. No longer fashion fluttered to their gates. The gallants
+who had been wont to pass them with, "Lud! what a pretty house!" were most
+of them asleep now on the green breast of mother England, forgetful of
+that wide thoroughfare, which had never reckoned life without them.
+
+Into the parlor of Knickerbocker House, dubbed Knickerbocker Mansion some
+years after the bibulous Sir William Howe had laid down his sceptre as
+ruler of the town, the chorus of bells crashed.
+
+"What a dastardly noise!" cried Jonathan Knickerbocker, throwing his
+newspaper over his head. "Can this Easter time never be kept without an
+infernal bell bombilation? I shall call a meeting of the vestry--that
+idiot Jenkins should be kept at home!"
+
+The head of the Knickerbocker family turned irately in his chair and
+glared at his daughters. Three timid pairs of blinking eyes were raised
+from short sacks in answer to his challenge, then lowered again over the
+wool. The fourth and fairest daughter of the house, seated on the walnut
+sofa in the bow-window, gave no heed to his vehemence but a suppressed
+sigh. With a final snort the _Gazette_ was picked up again. The Easter
+melody was waning.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Knickerbocker parlor--not the state parlor, which had long been
+closed--was a dismal place--so large that four candles and one Rumford
+lamp made but a patch of brightness in the gloom. Most of the furniture
+was ponderous and ugly, with two or three alien little chairs that looked
+as if they might once have belonged to some light-hearted lover of the
+Louis. On the almost barren chimney-piece stood a pair of tall nankeen
+beakers, sepulchrally reminiscent of buried Chinese years. Along the walls
+hung a score of mediocre portraits, the handiwork of the usurious limner
+John Watson and his compatriot Hessilius. Spans of sunlit days had stolen
+every tinge of carmine from their immobile and woodeny faces, leaving them
+the drab color of time, in keeping with the room.
+
+Above the cornice, near the sofa where Patricia Knickerbocker sat, hung an
+empty frame. The portrait it contained had been banished to the attic
+while her three eldest sisters were still in Wellington pantalets.
+
+"The woman looks like a Jezebel," Jonathan had sputtered. "Och! that
+leering smile." He tried to blot from his mind the stray leaves he knew of
+her story, and the disturbing thought that she was of his blood. "She
+shall not remain with the likenesses of my ancestors!" he had told his
+sisters, who were over from Goby House.
+
+When this descendant of the Knickerbockers spoke of his progenitors he
+always held his head a trifle more erect, and puffed out his pompous
+figure, though, strange to relate, like many another worthy man of a later
+day having the same foible, he knew very little about them. Of course he
+could have told you that the lady over the east bookcase, wearing a blue
+tucker and holding a spray of milk-weed in her hand, was his Aunt Jane;
+and that his father was a noted New York judge, the pride of three
+circuits. Or if his digression were extended, there was his trump card,
+one of the first American Knickerbockers, labelled "The Friend of Lord
+Cornbury!" These were the firmest rocks in his family history, to which he
+could climb in safety, thence to look down with scorn on those
+unfortunates beneath his social eminence. He was a Knickerbocker, of
+Knickerbocker Mansion, Vesey Street, and a member of one of the oldest
+families in York and America.
+
+Patricia, smiling little Patricia, rummaging one day among the dust-bins
+under the eaves, had found the banished portrait. Juma, the gray-wooled
+negro, a comparatively new member of the Knickerbocker household, who had
+appointed himself her body-servant ever since his arrival at the mansion,
+was with her.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A faithful slave to old Miss Johnstone of Crown Street, Juma had been
+forced by his mistress's death into new service. He was a picture of
+ebonized urbanity, a good specimen of the vanished race of Gotham blacks,
+gentler in manners and clearer in speech than their Southern cousins. In
+his youth he had been sent to one Jean Toussaint of Elizabethtown to learn
+the art of hair-dressing. He could impart much knowledge of wigs to a
+wigless age, and talked in a grandiloquent fashion of Spencers,
+Albemarles, and Lavants. Many a beau peruke and macaroni toupee his lithe
+fingers curled and sprinkled with sweet flower-water. The voices of the
+fine people who were his visitors made constant music in his memory, and
+his tongue was ever ready with anecdotes of wizened beauties and uncrowned
+cavaliers.
+
+Juma was faithful to the period of his greatest splendor. Deep in his
+heart he despised the home to which freedom and poverty had led him after
+the demise of his protectress. "Gold braid on company coat and silk
+stockings done ravel out in dese days. Knickerbockers talk quality, but
+dey ain't got quality mannahs--Missy Patsy is de only one of dem with
+tone."
+
+He loved to listen to the girl as she tripped through the great rooms,
+humming softly some air from Lennet's "London Song-Book"--one of the relics
+of his "ole Miss." Patricia always sang on the days when her sisters were
+visiting their aunts on the bluff. Juma loved her, and during his five
+years' residence in the family had many times taken her youthful mind in
+train with quaint eighteenth-century maxims and fetiches.
+
+"De wise miss drop her fan when she enters de ballroom," he would say.
+"Den she gets de men on der knees from de start."
+
+"I wish I were invited to balls," Patricia sighed. "The Kings and Grahams
+give one or two every year, but father never notices them."
+
+"Well, you jes' know how to behave," he chuckled. "Doan' yo' forget de
+tricks your Uncle Juma taught yo'."
+
+When the two had met in the attic that April day, Juma's spirits were as
+ebullient as usual.
+
+"How lovely she is, Juma! See, there is a blush on each cheek. Her pink
+brocade makes me think of a rose dancing in the wind."
+
+Patricia stared into the canvas face before her and the lips seemed to
+curve themselves into the shadow of a smile. "I know you were the fairest
+one of us," she whispered, "the fairest and the best."
+
+"Dat's the real quality way of holding the head," vouchsafed Juma. "I'se
+pow'ful 'clined to think she looks like yo', missy." And then they had
+laughed, shut away with maimed chairs, tired spinets, and other voiceless
+things, glad to have escaped from Knickerbocker frowns.
+
+[Illustration: "_How lovely she is, Juma!_"]
+
+It was a dismal household, that of the old mansion--the master absorbed in
+his passion for wealth and worship of family; the three eldest daughters,
+who might once have had some individuality but now were moulded in the
+form of their father. "Callow old maids," any individual of the lower
+ranks of York would have dubbed them. They wore little bunches of sedate
+curls over each ear, and dressed in sombre, genteel colors proper to their
+exalted rank. On the first day of the week they dozed through a long
+sermon; on its last day they simpered politely at the Whist Club. Fears of
+broken jelly-moulds or of the romping Patricia's next prank were the only
+disturbers of the tranquillity of their lives. Jonathan Knickerbocker was
+their one Almighty Mirror. When he labelled Mrs. Scruggins, the draper's
+niece, a person not fit to associate with, their stiff gowns obediently
+gave forth hisses at the said lady. When he prated of his father's
+shrewdness, they nodded discreet approval; and at the mere mention of the
+loyal friend of Lord Cornbury, they bobbed like grass before a gale.
+
+Patricia's impressionable temperament was saved by Juma's advent from the
+sirocco of dulness that wafted her sisters over the lake of years. His
+"ole Miss," a looker on at the "Court of Florizel," had unconsciously
+taught him to imbibe the atmosphere surrounding the Graces. A democracy
+could not spoil her elegance, for Chesterfield's warning was ever before
+her eyes. She who copied the footsteps of Baccelli, adored her Sterne and
+Beattie, and though her eyes grew dim, never let romance pass her window
+unmolested, had left her impress upon the mind of the faithful servitor.
+Life to him was a gay-colored picture-book, brighter perhaps because he
+could not read the printed page. All his maids were cherry-ribboned and
+belaced; all his roystering sparks clinked gilded canakins. Love was ever
+smiling on them! For wellnigh half a century he had listened to tales of
+the gay god as he bound one romance-loving woman's silken tresses. Small
+wonder that he thought the urchin ruled the world!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the bells rested their brassy throats for the first time that night,
+and Jonathan Knickerbocker could take up his West Indies accounts
+undisturbed, giving his daughters freedom to doze in peace, "Miss Patsy"
+stole on tiptoe from the room. She wanted to be alone. Juma, ambling
+through the dim hall to his pantry, caught sight of her fluttering
+garments, but did not speak. Only an hour or two before, he had placed in
+the chamber where she slept a bunch of arbutus which young Sheridan, the
+organist, had given into his keeping. The wild, sweet-scented flower grew
+in but one spot near the town--an island in the centre of the Woodbridge
+Swamp, where Captain Kidd in a freak of fancy had planted it over the body
+of a comrade, tradition said, and no one ever disputed the story. To reach
+it, even the most sure-footed ran the danger of being caught in the bog.
+
+Patricia wondered as she mounted the stairs how her lover had been able to
+come with her gift unseen. The watching negro smiled sadly and shook his
+head when the last bit of her garment disappeared over the staircase like
+a white moth moving treeward.
+
+Oh, how terrible it was never to see him in her father's house! Never to
+have seen him alone, only that one time, after twilight service, when she
+had stolen a meeting at the Battery, while her family were taking their
+Sabbath-day ride up the Bowery Road!
+
+The old vehicle held but six, and as the aunts always rode home with their
+brother, Patricia was left to the escort of Juma, custodian of the
+prayer-books. By the clump of protecting boxwood at the end of the Marine
+Parade she had come upon him. The sea held his eyes until there was no
+mistaking the footsteps. Her approaching crinoline made soft little
+rustles, as if entreating him to leave his musings. Her body-guard's
+shuffles, too, were unmistakable. Like some young potentate her lover
+turned about, describing an elaborate bow with his white castor. The very
+picture of starched tranquillity he looked, but underneath the blue
+hammer-tail coat a heart was beating wildly, as she, made wise by love,
+knew well--for her own was its echo.
+
+There was a brief moment while she watched the color mount to his
+sun-bronzed face, the blue eyes glow, the strong form quiver ever so
+slightly. Then her lips framed "Richard"--the key of the universe.
+"Patricia!" came the answer.
+
+Juma, from his discreet distance, heard her compared to the magnolia worn
+on the lapel of the coat she admired so much. In her white and fragrant
+young womanhood she was like it from sheer inaccessibility. The flower
+expressed her character and position--Patricia Knickerbocker, a daughter
+of the autocrat of York. When he mentioned her father's name the girl
+shivered. An invisible wall seemed to rise between them. Then the feeling
+died away. Her soul grew wider awake each moment her lover gazed at her.
+
+As he drew her closer to him Juma's figure in the background bent over a
+flower in the path.
+
+"Let 'em kiss," he mumbled. "Ole Miss used to say de female dat never lub
+am a sour pippin, and dere's enough ter start a vinegar press in dis
+family."
+
+"You'll not permit them to take you away from me? You will be mine forever
+and ever?" said the youth.
+
+A sigh of happiness answered him.
+
+"I know I'm poor, Patricia, and my family can never equal yours."
+
+"Don't!" she whispered. "What does it matter, what does anything
+matter--only that I'm here _with you_!"
+
+"See the night creeping in off there, dear heart. It holds nothing more
+wonderful than this moment."
+
+"How black the water looks," she faltered.
+
+"I will go to your father and demand your hand." She was trembling.
+
+"You do not know what a Knickerbocker is--an awful creature with a hundred
+gorgon heads constantly leering and preaching; detecting flaws in other
+people's families. One head will tell you that you play the organ in St.
+Paul's, and another may see that your coat is a trifle worn. We're not the
+only clan of them in the land."
+
+"We must not fear them--not to-night, when love is filling the world."
+
+"Only one of my grandmothers married for love, and she was thought to be
+disgraced."
+
+"You will follow her?" he asked, a catch in his voice.
+
+Juma was signalling for them to part, and on his forehead she kissed "I
+will!"
+
+Now alone on the dark staircase she meditated on his words. When that
+malignant crone, Gossip, started on her round, what would happen?
+
+Suddenly the voice of her father adding up the indigo cargo fell upon her
+ears. He would end their happiness; a man powerful enough to kill the
+spirit of Easter in his home could do anything. Creeping through the
+narrow passage she came to the great north balcony window. There she
+paused and raised her eyes to the dome of the night. Long lines of stars
+were strung across the meadows of heaven. The dials of the world seemed
+suddenly stilled. Below the infinite peace a budding landscape sloped
+gently into a placid sea. Myriads of little lights in humble cots blinked
+an answer to the fires above. Leaning on the broad window-seat of
+blackened Jersey oak she tried to descry his dwelling, but the tree-tops
+shut it away.
+
+A few hours before, he had asked her to be his wife, and she, a
+Knickerbocker, had thrilled at his words. Like a tide the memory of his
+love swept back to her. Then on its surges came the stupor of desolation.
+The gates of Knickerbocker pride were strong. A second David might fail to
+force them. All her dreams were fantasies, with no bearing upon reality.
+All her hopes were sunbeams vanquished by one dark shadow. To her
+distorted imagination her family seemed accursed. Every face bore some
+mark of it, even the row of dim portraits in the room below. But, ah!
+there was one, a face turned to the rafters of the attic, whose bright
+eyes and red lips knew love untinctured by the dross of the world. In the
+darkness it rose before her strangely insistent. As in a time-blurred
+mirror she looked and saw herself, and the feeling, though uncanny, gave
+her a sense of comfort.
+
+A wind began to sigh in the garden. Through the boxwood maze and barren
+urns it swept. Smiling Flora, sleeping Endymion, and all the fabulous
+court that had stood there years before the coming of the Knickerbockers
+grew more humanly colored as the moon passed behind a cloud. Since York
+had become a queenly city and the wonder of the western world, mute and
+peacefully passive they had watched the seasons come and go. Countless
+lovers must have known them. She saw back into the springs, the flower
+times. Sedan chairs and swaying post-chaises had borne these dainty lovers
+all away. Oh, strange, sweet thought! She, too, would have to go--with
+him.
+
+Down by the pale and shivering elms the iron bar of the gate clicked. Dark
+figures were entering the garden. The gods and goddesses faded before her
+eyes. No one visited them on Easter eve. Her father did not keep the
+season.
+
+She steadied her knees on the slippery seat. The spray of arbutus she was
+wearing over her heart cut her hands as she pressed closer to the pane.
+
+"My aunts! they know!" she whispered to herself.
+
+Terror of her father--of them all--swept over her, chilling the very
+recesses of her being. As the habiliments of her august relatives became
+more distinct, she grew calmer. With slow and measured tread they walked,
+while to their right minced Betty, a small abigail, swaying a lantern.
+
+"It is the march of pride coming to crush me!" she cried.
+
+Then the bells began to peal again--"Pride--pride" they seemed to mock.
+"Love must die for pride!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter _Two_
+
+
+[Illustration: I Rule by Right]
+
+On the wreck of many social thrones--for the town named after the Duke of
+York passed through numerous transitions the world knows nothing
+of--Patricia's aunt, Miss Georgina Knickerbocker, had elected to raise her
+sceptre. "I rule by right" was her dictum. "My family is old; few families
+are older or more aristocratic. The famous Judge Josiah Knickerbocker was
+my father, and my brother Jonathan owns Knickerbocker Mansion, the finest
+dwelling in York."
+
+No potentate ever wore a crown more blissfully than Miss Georgina. Tall,
+beak-nosed, gruff-voiced she was, always with her younger sister, Miss
+Julie, in tow and under good control--Miss Julie, who smirked and copied
+her when family pride was concerned, though she had her own misgivings and
+opinions on other matters. Miss Julie even had emotions and
+sentimentalities of her own, which she struggled to keep bottled up before
+her relatives and the world, uncovering them only in secret, as she did
+her jasmine scent and pomatum pot.
+
+The little woman's real name was Jerusalem, bestowed upon her at a time
+when the judge her father's religious spirit was in its blossoming period.
+One great grief of her life was that she had given way to wickedness and
+changed this outlandish cognomen. She often brought the subject up before
+Dr. Slumnus, as he stopped in for a social game of chess. "Indeed, Miss
+Julie," he would answer soothingly, "the name is so Christian that it
+sounds heathenish. No well-conducted female should presume to bear the
+name of the holy city. Nay, ma'am, it would have come perilously near
+sacrilege to retain it!"
+
+Thus assured, Miss Julie would give herself over to the excitement of
+endeavoring to queen a pawn. Later, in her chamber, ready to blow out her
+candle, alone with the crowd of memories waiting to conduct her to the
+land of dreams, she shuddered. Her father's stern eyes would glare at her
+reproachfully; sometimes she would try to mock at them, remembering the
+words of Dr. Slumnus--but oftener a tear or two trickled down her faded
+cheeks and stained the strings of her nightcap.
+
+Together these two elderly Knickerbockers were unweary in their efforts to
+interpret high life to their circle. Their family pride was more expansive
+than their brother Jonathan's. He talked chiefly of his Aunt Jane, the
+milk-weed lady, of his renowned father, and of that dim shade of a
+Knickerbocker who was the friend of Lord Cornbury. Miss Georgina had
+climbed higher into her hereditary tree. She prated of a great-uncle who
+married a niece of Lord Campbell--a cousin underscored in her records as
+Laird of Barula--the grand Makemies, the high-stepping Gabies, and the
+learned Gobies. And, as for Aunt Jane, why, she was dowered with a larger
+chest of silver than any Jersey woman of her day. Those records of her
+paduasoys and alamodes would have sickened a Custis; and her
+love-affairs!--the wench herself might have been astounded at hearing that
+she once refused a patroon of Rensselaerswyck and a president of the
+College of New Jersey.
+
+Quietly Miss Julie would sit and listen to her sister, but, once away from
+her, she would assume what she believed to be the Almack manner, call
+imagination to her aid, and discourse to her long-suffering acquaintance.
+Aunt Jane's chest of plate became a veritable crown furgeon laden with
+tasters, posset cups, punch-bowls, muffineers, and salvers of priceless
+and unique patterns. Her gowns would have done credit to a Drury Lane
+queen. The patroon of Rensselaerswyck drank a flask of camphor to forget
+his Jane. Scores of suitors died of lacerated hearts for her dear sake,
+and the president of the College of New Jersey vowed he could not hear the
+word love spoken in his presence, not even in his young gentlemen's
+conjugations.
+
+It was the arrival, from the vulgarian camp of Trenton, of one Mrs.
+Snograss that first brought interference with the sway of these gentle
+ladies. That year, in which Richard Sheridan first played the organ in St.
+Paul's and Mrs. Snograss elected to reside in York, proved, indeed, an
+eventful one for the community. The genteel portion of Gotham society,
+like the family of the Vicar of Wakefield, was wont to lead a peaceful
+life. Most of its adventures befell it by its own fireside, or consisted
+of migrations from the blue bed to the brown. Or there was the yearly
+glimpse of the Branch, or Schooley's Mountain, and on rare occasions
+venturesome parents took their offspring to Hobuck for a
+fortnight--especially if they were marriageable daughters.
+
+The Misses Knickerbocker had visited the latter place in its transition
+period. There Georgina purchased her Davenport tea-service for a song, and
+was fond of telling of the fact. And Julie treasured a sweeter memory of
+the green Elysium--a dried-up flower of memory, but once a rose,
+nevertheless, carefully guarded from the world, hidden indeed from herself
+most of the time.
+
+No one knew exactly how it began--that social war over the two capitals of
+Trenton and York. Black "Rushingbeau," the York pronunciation for Mrs.
+Snograss's serving-man, Rochambeau, meeting Juma at the morning market in
+the centre of the green, had dubbed the Knickerbocker chickens
+"spinkle-shanked fowls."
+
+"Wot you know 'bout hens in yo' small 'count town!" retorted the loyal
+champion of York. Like a mushroom the story grew, and spread from Vesey
+Street kitchens into sitting-rooms and parlors. Of course the aspersive
+attitude toward York was that of Mrs. Snograss reflected in Rochambeau.
+
+"To think that a resident of Trenton, a city named after a mere merchant,
+should have the effrontery to speak disparagingly of our ancient capital!"
+cried Mrs. Rumbell, mother-in-law of Dr. Slumnus. "These are degenerate
+times, alack! What would poor Roberta Johnstone say if she were here? Let
+me see how many royal governors have lived amongst us."
+
+Mrs. Rumbell counted on her slim, old fingers. The Knickerbocker ladies,
+who lacked the Rumbell knowledge of their city's past, brought all their
+brightest family banners to the fray.
+
+"Lud," said Miss Georgina, and Miss Julie promptly echoed her, "I have
+never even visited the spot where the Snograss woman came from; I know
+that the Comte de Survilliers, or plain Mr. Bonaparte, as he prefers to be
+called, when he failed to secure Knickerbocker Mansion for a residence
+decided to repair thither. Poor man, he must have languished!" she added
+with a final snort.
+
+"And he was such a showy man too!" sighed her sister.
+
+Mrs. Snograss, learning of the ferment her servant had aroused,
+sagaciously remarked: "Let them talk; their chatter is a lecture to the
+wise; as for capitals, everybody knows, counting out the inhabitants of
+this mud-hole, that Trenton came near being the capital of the whole
+country!"
+
+When this bombastic statement was hurled at Vesey Street, it made as much
+of a sensation as the late news from Cherubusco. Most of the Government
+officers were classed with the Snograss widow by the affronted Gothamites,
+and Mrs. Rumbell said openly that if she had her life to live over England
+should have welcomed her when the cross of St. George was torn down from
+the courthouse flag-staff.
+
+The winter died and still there was no cessation of hostilities. The
+choir-room of St. Paul's, where the ladies of the Bengal mission met and
+listened to itinerant lecturers, or sewed garments for the needy, was the
+usual field for battle. When Mrs. Snograss arrived late one day for Mr.
+Timbuckey's talk on the piety of George Crabbe, she was unfortunately
+ushered to Miss Georgina Knickerbocker's bench. That haughty lady, the
+enemy being comfortably ensconced, arose and stalked over to Mrs.
+Rumbell's seat, followed by her sister and the Mansion girls, so that the
+bustle ensuing spoke to everybody of what was taking place. Patricia
+smiled a mortified, half-sad smile at Mrs. Snograss, but the Trentonian
+only accepted it as additional insult.
+
+A month later Mrs. Rumbell fainted when her sewing-chair was placed by the
+disturber of her peace. She was one of the most violent in her aversion to
+the newcomer. The Rev. Samuel Slumnus shook his fat finger at his
+mother-in-law, as the crafty dowager, enjoying the excitement created by
+her feigned swoon, could see with her eyes half-opened. Such conduct was
+not to be borne. "Rebellion in my own family," fumed the perplexed
+dominie. "I must put a stop to it at once." In his agitation he clasped
+and unclasped his hands and caressed his sparse locks. When a hush fell at
+last upon the room, he was seen mounting the choir-platform.
+
+"The meeting of the Easter Guild will be held this year at the residence
+of Mrs. Snograss," he sputtered. For a full minute silence reigned--then
+came a clangor of tongues. "He is almost as red in the face as if he
+choked on the prune-pits in the Knickerbocker fruit-cake," some irreverent
+one whispered. It was said afterward that Mrs. Snograss had put a
+five-dollar bill in the mission-box as she left the choir-room that
+morning--a performance not without effect. A few parishioners were even
+heard to lament the fact that Dr. Slumnus's family was not of the same
+standing as his wife's. Miss Georgina declared privately to her sister
+that any one who went to the Snograss woman's should never darken the door
+of Goby House again. But when the day preceding Easter came, and she heard
+from Julie of the delight the town was taking in the prospect of viewing
+the much-talked of Snograss interior, one venturesome housekeeper having
+even asserted that she intended going up to the chambers, Miss Georgina,
+wild with jealousy, decided to carry the war into the enemy's country.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+As the night before that day of days died away and clarion cocks made the
+young dawn vocal, eager hands drew back the curtains of four-posters.
+Above the green-gray of spring-time streets and lanes, the sentinel
+tree-tops pointed to the translucent blue of a smiling sky. "Day's fair
+and all's well!" bawled the watch as they blew out their smoking lights.
+Voices cracked and rusted by sleep echoed the cry in the depths of soft,
+chintz-bound coverlets. "My best ferrandine coat," mumbled Miss Georgina
+to herself, in her delight over a pleasing picture of her entrance into
+the Snograss parlor. She let the bolster slip to the floor and
+precipitated her head against the carved laurel leaves of the top-board,
+all unconsciously. Bright were the visions of cherished falafals and
+gewgaws that came to the members of the Easter Guild as they parted
+company with Morpheus.
+
+Mrs. Rumbell, looking from a casement in the rectory, felt the sweetness
+of the season fall upon her. That patch of fresh sky, suggestive of new
+life and a swift-footed May, was more to her than a volley of sermons. The
+snow still lay on hill and heath. Father Winter, neglectful of one of his
+worlds, was sporting among the northern mountains. Oh, the peace of it!
+Why should she care if the wealthy Mrs. Snograss had come to York with her
+Trenton innovations? All her past grievances were forgotten. In her
+blissful state she felt she could even go the length of sewing whalebone
+in her second-best silk skirt to conform to the ridiculous fashion of
+stiffened skirts, introduced by that lady. Everything was changing! What
+could she, frail and old, gain by wrestling with the times? Across the
+way, torn landscape shades blinded the windows of Johnstone House. Roberta
+was dead and her home awaited a new tenant. Beyond lay the Bowling Green,
+the background of her long life--witness to all the parts the
+stage-master, Fate, had dealt out to her. Joys and sorrows marked its worn
+paths. The city of her golden time was fading away. No halloos of eager
+huntsmen, ushering in Aurora, greeted her ears as of yore. Only a stray
+thrush, mistaking the season, trilled liquid notes to his lost mates on a
+hemlock by her chamber.
+
+Soon the daylight's eyes were wide open, and the door-knockers, across the
+church-yard, began to glow like miniature suns. Festivals and holidays
+always brought the housekeepers of York to market, followed by their
+faithful blacks carrying little wicker baskets. They tripped first to Mrs.
+Sykes's booth, where one could find all the season's delicacies; then to
+the wintergreen-berry man, and on through the circle of venders. The
+mystical joy of Eastertide that flooded the heart of Mrs. Rumbell in the
+dawn swept through the concourse at the market. The perfume of the
+southern lilies, the merry cries of hucksters, and the shrill calls of
+gutter-waifs as they tugged at the skirts of Cock-a-nee-nae Bess were all
+permeated with it.
+
+The prattling groups about Mrs. Sykes ofttimes broke away to take sly
+looks across the green at the distant Broadway. "Will she come?" "Shall we
+extend our hands to her, or just curtesy?" These and many like questions
+went for naught that morning. The blinds of Snograss house were parted; a
+turbaned negress came out and washed the entry. Once the opening of a door
+thrilled the curious dames. But the newcomer was waiting to enjoy her full
+triumph in the afternoon.
+
+No one looked toward the house on Vesey Street. The Knickerbockers never
+frequented the market--Jonathan Knickerbocker forbade his family's
+participation in such vulgar customs.
+
+Georgina did not descend to her sitting-room in as pleasant a humor as was
+to have been expected from her waking contemplations. She jangled her keys
+so ominously as she strutted through the halls and pantries that Julie was
+afraid to venture out. On the day before Easter the little woman was in
+the habit of stealing away to a by-lane near the market. From a discreet
+distance she directed her purchases. Children would run for her oranges,
+the cock-a-nee-nae necessary to her happiness, the boxes of Poppleton
+sweets and foreign nuts. When they were very swift she would reward them
+with as much as a dime apiece, so great was the delight she felt in
+providing a secret store of goodies.
+
+To-day there was no escaping. The market was sold out and the booths
+carried away before she finished helping her sister tie up the Easter
+presents. It was a custom among the ladies of York to exchange chaste and
+useful gifts of their own handiwork. Worsted hat-bag covers and silk
+mittens were the favorites. Mrs. Rumbell was the one exception to the
+rule. She still cut up her father's brocade vests into small squares,
+which she filled with dried rose-geranium leaves and distributed among her
+acquaintance. Three generations had received these fragrant marks of her
+regard, and the wits accused her relative of having been a Hollander,
+addicted to the habit of swarthing himself in superfluous garments.
+Members of the Scruggins set went further, and hinted maliciously that he
+was a dealer in old clothes.
+
+Miss Georgina preferred silk mittens, and gave and received no less than a
+dozen pairs a season. If the ones sent to her were of a color she did not
+like, she kept them for a year or two, and then packed them off again.
+This was quite permissible in York. On one occasion Georgina's own mittens
+were returned to her, but far from being angry, she smiled a grim welcome
+at them, and remarked to her household that she was glad to see them back
+for they were at least fashioned of pure silk, and that was more than she
+could say of many pairs that had been sent to her.
+
+Quaint little ladies of Gothamtown--quaint little old-time
+figures!--flitting in and out of your ancient homes like shadows!--who
+cares to-day for your petty gifts, your plans, and jealousies? Only one or
+two remember you. The walks you trod are vanishing, the water-front
+gardens where you smiled and languished at sedate gentlemen are mostly
+hidden 'neath bricks and mortar, and the very buildings you were born in,
+that stood so long impervious to the rude hands of progress, are being
+demolished. Those musty garments of Juma's "ole Miss," the friend of Mrs.
+Rumbell, are now folded in some attic trunk with your own pet vanities.
+What would the haughty Miss Georgina have said if she could have gazed
+through the door of the future and seen a Scruggins brat grown into a
+leader of fashion and carrying her own tortoise fan--sold with other
+Knickerbocker effects at the last vendue?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+If one had loitered in Vesey Street that afternoon before Easter so many
+years past, one would, no doubt, have joined the stragglers about the
+gates of Snograss House, and watched the members of St. Paul's Easter
+Guild mince up Broadway, carefully keeping to the pave. The Flying Swan
+from Elizabethtown was due at four o'clock, and those timid ladies of the
+long ago knew that the swaying, swaggering bedlam of a coach would enjoy
+spattering them as it rattled up to the City Hotel. On the porch of that
+fine hostelry, where Mr. Clarke once wooed his muse and scores of thirsty
+throats the wine-cup, stood the host, Davy Juniper, whose very name was
+synonymous with cheer. Through the half-opened door came loud gusts of
+unceremonious laughter as the portly innkeeper, curveting on tiptoe, swung
+his garland of Easter green over the sign-board. Davy's eyes were riveted
+on the flashing colors of feminine gear across the street. Now Mrs.
+Rumbell tottered by and bobbed to him; now a bevy of the Scruggins set
+passed the house opposite, and gazed in, like forbidden Peris at the door
+of Paradise. Sometimes the street was covered with pedestrians. The
+quality abroad affected the good man's spirits. He began to pipe some
+merry verses from a tap-room ditty:
+
+  Major Macpherson heav'd a sigh,
+      Tol, de diddle, dol, dol;
+  And Major Macpherson didn't know why,
+      Tol, de diddle, dol, dol;
+  But Major Macpherson soon found out,
+      Tol, de diddle, dol, dol;
+  'Twas all for Miss Lavinia Scout,
+      Tol, de diddle, dol, dol.
+
+The night was creeping on, clear and cold, and there would be full settles
+about his waggish fires. In the sky, puffs of fleecy clouds were hurrying
+away like sheep eager to reach the fold of mother-dusk. Off in the west,
+where twilight parted her curtains, glowed faint streaks of yellow and
+rose color, promises of daffodil meadows and flower-strewn lands to come.
+
+He was turning for a parting survey of the street when his ears caught the
+tremulous motion of some vehicle. Dashing out of Vesey Street came the
+Knickerbocker chariot, creaking protestations as it swung up to the
+Snograss stile.
+
+Out popped Miss Georgina, followed by her sister. Never had Miss Georgina
+seemed so like a man-of-war's man in a flounce. Miss Julie shrunk into
+insignificance beside her. Tavern maids, attracted by the noise and
+heedless of the cold, poked their heads out of dormer windows. The
+passengers on the Flying Swan just turning the pike slipped cautiously
+from the seats behind the guard to find out the cause of the excitement.
+Juma, hurrying home to the mansion, paused for a moment to see the sisters
+of his master step down. "Ramrods--old Ramrods," jeered Mr. Juniper, as he
+flung a last defiant "tol, de rol," at the gaping street.
+
+The door of the tavern had no more than swung to when that of Snograss
+House opened. Every inmate of the room eyed Miss Georgina as she greeted
+the mistress. There was an element of hostility in their ceremonious
+handshake. As the sister of the autocrat of York viewed the rich
+furnishings of the apartment, the gold-legged piano and the silk-covered
+furniture, her lips straightened into a sinister line. Her own possessions
+shrunk into insignificance compared with this elegance. Even the long
+shut-up state parlor in Knickerbocker Mansion could hardly vie with it.
+Lady Tyron, the last lady of York, had fitted that room with heirlooms
+from her English home. Jonathan was in the habit of calling it the finest
+apartment in the State. He prated of its mouldering beauties often,
+forgetting that it was lauded by his townsmen long before the
+Knickerbockers entered its portals.
+
+The contents of the Snograss parlor had given other Gothamites momentary
+uneasiness that afternoon. Of course no one felt they possessed the
+Knickerbocker right to feel deeply aggrieved over them. Mrs. Rumbell,
+spying the oil-painted views of Trenton by the entrance door, hurriedly
+shut her eyes, vowing the calm feeling in her heart should not be
+disturbed. As penance for the pain which the pictures of the hated capital
+gave her she seized a dish of quince scones and ran with them to Dr.
+Slumnus. Refreshments had not been passed about, and the rector of St.
+Paul's signalled to his mother-in-law not to approach. Thinking that he
+preferred the gooseberry tarts on an opposite table she hastened over for
+them, until Samuel, visibly embarrassed by her attentions, left his
+comfortable cushioned chair and took refuge in the hall.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+If any one had imagined that Mrs. Snograss would forgive the various
+slights put upon her in York, she or he was doomed to disappointment. All
+the pleasant things they said to her about her costly egg-shell china, the
+glass aviary with the artificial tree, and other luxuries, failed to
+soften her vindictive mood. Each timidly expressed compliment recalled to
+her a covert sneer, a deprecating smile, or a garment hastily drawn aside.
+As Miss Georgina, on behalf of the presiding committee, counted up the
+Easter gifts the church would give to the poor, the Trenton widow whom she
+feared as a rival was musing on past insults.
+
+"Ten tin trumpets," called the loud voice.
+
+"I can humble her," thought the Snograss woman.
+
+"Ten surprise packages," continued the other.
+
+"I'll give the Knickerbocker family a surprise," spoke the indignant
+Trentonian half aloud.
+
+She was naturally an amiable person, but the aristocratic congregation of
+St. Paul's had impaired her temper, proffering her vinegar when she had
+sought the wine of good-fellowship. She stared at the bedizened figure of
+the sister of the autocrat of York a moment longer, then turned meaningly
+to the only member of the Scruggins set who happened to be present. There
+was already a look of triumph in her eyes. "She shall bend to the dust
+soon," she whispered. Then she arose from her sofa, clashing the folds of
+her tilter until the room was full of lustring mockery. Everything was in
+readiness for Mrs. Snograss's climax of the afternoon. Revenge spread out
+its hands and gave her tongue.
+
+"Have you ever heard of 'The School for Scandal,' Miss Knickerbocker?" she
+asked, wreathing her face in an inscrutable smile.
+
+Glad of an opportunity for displaying her knowledge, Georgina rose eagerly
+to the bait. "I saw the play at the Park in the twenties. 'Twas a
+prodigious fine cast, if I remember."
+
+"They say a new Sheridan has come to our city." Every Gothamite loved that
+phrase, "our city," and Mrs. Snograss dwelt on the words with the nicest
+shade of mimicry. "He is preparing a little comedy I might dub the same
+name," she snickered.
+
+"An author man?" asked the Knickerbocker voice that always filled the
+room. "What does he want here?"
+
+A sudden silence fell upon the company. Eyes were turned on the Turkey
+carpet before the fireplace where the great ladies stood. Ears were cocked
+in their direction. The pirouetting woodland fay embellishing the tambour
+firescreen, worked by the Trentonian when she attended Madame de Foe's
+Academy for gentle children, wore a more conscious smirk than usual. Even
+the twin Bow dogs which had held their tufted tails erect through the
+stormiest family fracases seemed agitated.
+
+"He plays the organ at our church," she answered with forced deliberation;
+then in a whisper loud enough to have done credit to a lady on the boards,
+she added, "and when away from that instrument spends his time making love
+to your niece Patricia."
+
+Mrs. Snograss gave a hysterical laugh and retreated a few rods.
+
+A thunder-bolt falling at Miss Georgina's feet could not have created more
+consternation. For a moment she glared at the creature before her as if
+she were a butterfly or a beetle--something to be crushed and killed--then
+remembering that politeness is always a trusty weapon, she roared in as
+soft a fashion as she could, "You are mistaken, madam!"
+
+"My Julie saw them kissing less than an hour ago on the Marine Parade!"
+
+"Ladies who make confidants of their servants are often misinformed," the
+other hissed.
+
+By this time all Vesey Street was on its feet. The plans of the day were
+forgotten. Every one was too stunned to speak. A Knickerbocker openly
+insulted--the thought was appalling! Miss Julie, who was fingering some
+Snograss ambrotypes, let them slip to the floor in her excitement. She had
+not been so much agitated for years--not since a certain ship sailed out
+of Amboy for the Indies bearing a youthful captain whom Judge
+Knickerbocker had bidden her forget.
+
+"Oh, oh!" she gasped--and there were those who afterward declared she
+looked almost pleased. "My niece has a lover!" But in another breath, "Oh,
+what will her father say?"
+
+[Illustration: "_My Julie saw them kissing less than an hour ago on the
+marine parade_"]
+
+"Jerusalem, restrain yourself," called her sister. That lady was sweeping
+proudly from the room.
+
+"Impudence!" she said, thrusting her sister out of the hall. When the cold
+air of the street touched their hot faces, she spoke again. Her anger was
+fast engulfed in a wave of bitter humiliation.
+
+"We are disgraced, Jerusalem! The Knickerbocker name dishonored! The man
+is a person of common family. I fear the Gobies and the Gabies are turning
+in their graves. What would Aunt Jane have thought?"
+
+"They kissed in the shrubbery--My niece in love?" Miss Julie was
+whispering to herself unheeded. The faded leaves of the one flower in her
+heart were stirring gently.
+
+Now and then the faint note of a bell drifted on the air. The old sexton
+of St. Paul's was preparing his metal children for their long anthem.
+
+"Oh, joyous night, make haste--make haste," they tinkled to the taper-like
+star above them.
+
+"Disgraced!" muttered Miss Georgina.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter _Three_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The 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!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: "_The lady of the banished portrait was moving through the
+doorway_"]
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Four_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+As the family neared the long unused state parlor the din grew louder--a
+rising treble of voices, ascending from hoarse trumpet tones to a
+twittering falsetto, accompanied by a maddening persistent tapping of high
+heels on the smooth floor. The sounds of shivering glass as a girandole
+crashed from its joining met their ears. Each second was a discord running
+wild with panic-striking incidents.
+
+Julie grasped frantically at the more stalwart Georgina, while clinging to
+her own garments were the three Mansion girls, screeching like the town's
+whistles 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 ate
+up those bracelets he gave me for taking treacle. I sold them to a
+silversmith and bought French prunes. You know you said that you'd as soon
+eat stewed bull-frogs as anything grown by the Monsieurs, and all York was
+stewing prunes!"
+
+Georgina never turned her head at this remarkable confession. Her features
+had assumed a strange rigidity; she was as silent as her brother. The
+shrieks of her nieces, old Juma's incessant lamentations, and the low
+whispers of the lovers were all unheeded. The racket behind the cobwebbed
+doors, never opened but for Knickerbocker weddings and funerals, absorbed
+her senses. Slowly they were swinging back for Jonathan and his phantom
+partner. The delicate odor of sandal-wood, was strengthened by gasps of
+musk. Into a yellow blinding glare of light the file of Knickerbockers
+looked, and their eyes grew gooseberry-like with horror.
+
+A crowd of shades bedecked in their last earthly garniture were gliding
+and teetering about; some dignified as at a stately farce, others
+hilarious with ungraceful levity.
+
+As the living Knickerbockers appeared in the room the waggling and
+chortling fell into a monotone, and the company began to pass in review
+before them, seemingly desirous of attracting individual notice. Few wore
+the costly attire one would have expected from the tales spread about them
+by the Knickerbockers of Vesey Street. Several were clad in plain hum-hums
+and torn fustians. One chirpy dame in a moth-eaten tabby hugged a little
+package of Bohea to her stomacher, unmindful of the fact that the luxury
+had grown much cheaper since she quitted this sphere. Another, who
+evidently thought herself a beauty, wore a false frontage of goat hair
+before her muslin cap, and ogled Jonathan as she passed, though he did not
+seem eager for a flirtation with his ugly great-aunt.
+
+An ungainly yokel stepped on the feet of the Mansion girls, and some bold
+gentlemen, who had spent a goodly portion of their natural lives in
+Bridewell, swore at them. Still the awful procession kept moving on--faces
+were as thick as the tapers glowing in every bracket and candelabra.
+Bursts of music rose on the wind--a wheezing tune that sobbed of past
+jubilation. Suddenly all the Knickerbockers gasped. Stern Judge
+Knickerbocker, who had rarely smiled in life, was seen advancing, bent
+double with laughter and clinging to a figure in a cardinal hoop.
+
+"Oh, let us cover our eyes," whispered Miss Georgina. "This is more than I
+can bear."
+
+"Don't!" said the lady of the banished portrait. "You have often boasted
+of your family's intimacy with that queer figure. Through your veneration
+of him, York has made him into quite a hero. It is the friend of one of
+the first American Knickerbockers--Lord Cornbury! He was addicted to
+wearing women's furbelows!"
+
+"Gazooks!" exclaimed his Lordship, in a tone loud enough for the
+Knickerbockers to hear. "More of those tiresome impertinents! The next
+thing the whole of the presumptuous clan will be petitioning me for
+standing room at my routs."
+
+"Don't go any nearer to them," said the Judge, in the tones of a
+sycophant. "If they bore you, my dear Corny, I am willing to cut them.
+_You know it is the fashion on earth to recognize only the most desirable_
+ancestors, and we can return the compliment. Besides it was decreed that I
+should be jocular for the next half century, and I'm afraid a too close
+inspection would cause me to don weepers."
+
+The group by the doors felt a sickening sensation in their flaccid frames.
+Jonathan's partner, knowing how grievously they must all have been
+affected by the change in their parent, turned her head.
+
+A one-eyed hag was advancing to her. She curtsied low, and presented two
+bits of plaster which had fallen from the ceiling.
+
+"Messages," she snickered, fumbling with her hands.
+
+"From Marmaduke and Leonidas Barula," read the lady (though no one knows
+how, for she only observed the niches). "We beg to be excused from coming
+to-night. To put it mildly, we were raised aloft in Pearl Street Hollow
+for practising target shooting on coach-drivers, and our necks are still
+out of joint and not fit to be seen in company."
+
+As the merriment waxed louder a Gobie, who had spent her life as a
+fish-fag, began tapping on the panelled wainscot. With a hoarse guffaw she
+turned her piercing alaquine eyes on Miss Julie and squinted--"More negus!
+More here, you slubber-degullions. We Gobies has a thirst. 'Twas what we
+were noted for in life--not our learning, great-niece," she mocked, as she
+turned her head and grimaced at Miss Georgina.
+
+"Go away!" snuffled that once resolute woman, too weak to combat any
+longer. A feeling of despair was settling upon her like a pall. What if
+Mrs. Rumbell, or, worse still, if Mrs. Snograss should be passing
+Knickerbocker House and hear the oaths and ungenteel voices of the
+supposedly elegant family? No tap-room fracas at Fraunces' could have
+equalled the deafening hubbub.
+
+"Beshrew the old fool, she be as jealous for the lies she told of us as a
+Barbary pigeon."
+
+"Go away!" continued the sinking sister of the autocrat of York.
+
+That distraught-looking gentleman himself was hastening across the room
+with restorative salts, which one of his daughters always carried in her
+reticule. As he approached Georgina the Gobie snatched the bottle from his
+hand and drained it at a gulp.
+
+"Anything with fire-water for me," she hiccoughed. Then clutching hold of
+him, she sunk her voice to a whisper--"I left this sphere for drinking a
+quart of gillyflower scent!"
+
+Julie began to weep softly--"Oh, Aunt Jane, if you were only here! Our
+Aunt Jane was different from these people," she wailed to herself, half
+apologetically.
+
+She was fond of studying the picture in the other room and could have
+traced it from memory. Raising her eyes, she gave a prolonged shriek. The
+fish-fag and some of the Makemies were dragging her beloved Jane over Lady
+Lyron's court steps, out of the powdering closet.
+
+The room was becoming uproarious. Doors were opening and shutting again,
+letting in the moaning of the bells. The culmination of the buffoonery was
+approaching.
+
+"Good, Jane," sobbed Miss Julie.
+
+"Good, Jane," echoed the chorus of the spectres.
+
+Reluctant, and feigning a great stress of emotion, the poor lady was
+pushed into the illuminated space below the hundred-taper drop. She looked
+like some pretty long-vaulted effigy. In her hands she still carried the
+spray of milk-weed.
+
+The noise lessened for a moment. Jane gazed reproachfully at her niece,
+Julie, as if the indiscreet wish were the cause of her present misery, and
+said, in a pensive voice, "I did not want to come to-night."
+
+"I always knew you were a modest woman," said Jonathan, recovering a
+little of his once audacious manner.
+
+"Modest forsooth!" giggled the fish-fag diabolically, and seizing one of
+Jonathan's fat hands in her bony fingers, she drew it over the other's
+face.
+
+"Look, see the white streaks on her now! She reddened, the hussy,--or I'm
+not a Gobie!"
+
+"Yes, I was vain," answered the most prated-about of female
+Knickerbockers. "I used countless beautifiers--pearl powders, cherry
+salve, cupid's tints. Everything Mr. Gaine sold at the Crown. They hooked
+the men. When pearl powders came upon the market, I received three
+offers--Jenks--a tutor at King's College--not the President, as the report
+remains on earth--wrote me a poem in the _Weekly Gossiper_, called 'Pink
+and White Amanda.'"
+
+"Jane Knickerbocker," said the ghost who was giving the party, "your
+family has spent many hours telling the present generation of your womanly
+virtues, and they cannot fail in having an overweening respect for any
+opinion you may utter. Shall this girl who bears your blood marry yon
+youth?"
+
+"Let them wed by all means, if they see advantage in it. I vow if I could
+come back to earth and live my twenty-eight years over again, I would join
+hands with Jean, our Elizabeth-Town perfumer."
+
+Lord Cornbury and the shades about him were bowed with mirth.
+
+"Janet, you giddy girl, though half the age of most of us, I protest you
+are becoming a wit. You will be getting into society next," he cried. "I
+shall never be mean enough to tell that in sublunary times one of the
+first American Knickerbockers knew me intimately only as my valet."
+
+"A fig for your class distinctions," called the fair indignant, hunting
+for a rouge rag. "Years ago we heard ''twas money made the court circle at
+York.' Why, you must remember how you feared your creditors when they
+first came below."
+
+"Alack, indeed," said his Lordship plaintively, "this hooped petticoat was
+never paid for."
+
+After dishevelled Jane had vanished again into the powdering closet whence
+she had first emerged, the lady of the banished portrait moved over to
+Patricia and her lover. Standing side by side the resemblance between the
+two women was remarkable. One was the budding flower; the other the
+fragile shadow of a beautiful life.
+
+"Her kind will always exist," she said. "They marry for pearl powders and
+other vanities, and usually seek, or are forced into, a gilded cage.
+There, like jackdaws, they call out their possessions from dawn till
+night, and the heedless world passing by sees the sparkling of the gold,
+mistakes the caws for singing, and applauds. I knew love--the ideal love
+that smiles at one from the wayside when one is seeking it in the
+well-kept gardens. I paid for it with my heart's blood, and I never had
+cause to regret. Over the rough places of my earthly journey it followed
+me with radiant illusions. The April winds were sweeter, the sunshine on
+the roads warmer. I felt all the raptures mother nature gives her
+children. That is why I could leave the other world to do you this
+service. _Love_ is the one thing death cannot lull to sleep!"
+
+Patricia tried to answer, but the power of speech had left her for the
+moment. Juma's face was glowing with peaceful smiles. He bent low on his
+right knee to kiss the diaphanous draperies of the shade.
+
+Outside in the night there arose the low murmurous chanting of the town
+waits moving homeward. A chime of bells, as soft as a blessing. The thorns
+had fallen from the brows of love.
+
+While Patricia's benefactress gave her message the circle of ghosts was
+making way for the other Knickerbockers to enter. On closer inspection,
+many of them proved to be tame sort of animals enough. From a distance one
+monster of a woman had given the impression that she was trying to bully
+posterity. Perhaps this was due to the long feathers in her head-dress,
+that nodded maliciously at her most placid motion. As she bowed to her
+descendants a plume tickled the tip of Jonathan's nose and he jumped back
+slightly. "I am Melodia Mudford Makemie," she said, "and I thought you
+would like to meet me, as I started the Christmas fashion of giving
+hot-bag covers in York."
+
+"Hot-bag covers!" reiterated Miss Georgina, astonished. "I have always
+said mittens. Why, in my ancestry book it is noted that in the year 1768
+you gave one hundred pairs of silk mittens to Gruel Hall, the home for
+tiresome gentlewomen."
+
+"The years play great hoaxes," chuckled the ghost. "Those ancestry books
+are a standard joke with us, and I believe they are looked upon with some
+suspicion in your own world."
+
+Melodia seemed so friendly, Julie gained courage enough to purse up her
+lips for a speech, but the shade anticipated her.
+
+"I know what you are going to ask--why did I make such a wide frill about
+the bottle's neck? 'Tis easy to explain. I never took my bag to church to
+warm my hands--'twas my stomach!"
+
+"Oh!" said Miss Julie, faltering slightly, fearing that this relative
+might become vulgar like the terrible Gobies still dancing about Lord
+Cornbury.
+
+"Yes," continued the other, "when William fell asleep during the sermon I
+used to sink down well in the pew, put the frill up to my mouth, squeeze
+the end of the bag, and get as much as a dram of whiskey."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Julie, aghast; "a hot-water bag for whiskey!"
+
+"Why not?" said the ghost, angrily. Her manner was that of one who had
+expected commendation for her cleverness. The plumes in her head-dress
+were shaking violently.
+
+"Why not, miss?" she asked again. "You are far too nice. At any rate you
+know the reason for those tomfool bag-covers. 'Twas to deaden the smell of
+liquor. Your generation of Yorkers does not appreciate them as we did."
+Then her voice broke into derisive sniggers, as she glided away.
+
+And now upon the strange company fell the bellowing of some faithful
+passing watchman.
+
+"Midnight's here and fair weather!"
+
+A sleepy cock crowed in a distant Chelsea barn.
+
+The faces of the shades began to blanch and assume the lack-lustre tint of
+ashes. The lady of the banished portrait touched Patricia as if giving her
+a last embrace, and her smile at Richard Sheridan was full of good wishes.
+
+"Do you consent to the marriage," she whispered, bending over Jonathan,
+"or shall we come to-morrow night?"
+
+"I do," he answered hoarsely.
+
+"Then we go in peace," sighed the ghost.
+
+There was a flutter of garments and the lights vanished suddenly. Only the
+scents of old-time perfumes remained, sweet as the hearts of vanished
+roses.
+
+A cackle of feeble laughter floated back to the room as if the departing
+Knickerbockers were still making merry on the stairway to the other world.
+
+The song of the weary bells was over. Peace had fallen upon the earth, and
+in Lady Tyron's mouldering parlor the vials of a foolish pride were
+despoiled forever. Through the mystical light the living of the family
+seemed to be strangely transfigured. Jonathan Knickerbocker, the autocrat
+of York, walked with his head bowed upon his breast. The hard lineaments
+of Georgina's face were softened. Ofttimes she turned uneasily, half
+expecting some awful apparition to emerge before her. As for Miss Julie,
+she moved like one in a dreamland of her own. The tears of the night had
+fallen upon that little flower in her heart and brought it back to life.
+Henceforth it would fill all her remaining years with fragrance. The three
+eldest Knickerbocker daughters clung to her as if she were the guiding
+light of their starved souls.
+
+Suddenly she left them, and went to her brother.
+
+"I am glad they came, Jonathan," she faltered; "we had forgotten God made
+us all in His own image. He gave us the flowers and the stars, the sweet
+winds and the spring-times--the voices of children and the songs of birds.
+Every man is rich if he but knew it, and those who are only rich in pride
+are the poorest of the race."
+
+Over by the shimmering casement, the youth and the girl crept nearer to
+each other. Softly he drew her to him until her face was close to his. The
+night was dead. Down old Broadway, over the Bowling Green, the Easter dawn
+tiptoed into the silent city.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: All apparent printer's errors retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The ghosts of their ancestors, by Weymer Jay Mills
+
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