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.
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 ofsome 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 tothe 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 possessionsshrunk 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 rightto 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 cushionedchair and took refuge in the hall.
If any one had imagined that Mrs. Snograss would forgive the various slights put upon her in York, she or he was doomed todisappointment. 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 hascome 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 Trentonianwhen 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 MissGeorgina'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 onewas 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?"
"Jerusalem, restrain yourself," called her sister. That lady was sweeping proudly from the room.
"My Julie saw them kissing less than an hour ago on the marine parade"
"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.
T
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. Whentheir 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 hornpipersand 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 anornament 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 andlonely 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 Jonathantook 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 implementof 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-coatwas 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 andethereal 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 Junetimeroses. 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 onthe 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 girlwas 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 judgmentwas 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 asideevery 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 pointingto 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. Witha 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 intoeach 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 shipinto 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 younglife, 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 overchairs 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 meetyou 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 swelledthe 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.
s 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 wasa 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 thefile 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 humhumsand 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 processionkept 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 mostdesirableancestors, 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 LeonidasBarula," 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 werenoted 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 differentfrom 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 thefish-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 theWeekly 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 forsinging, 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.Loveis 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 wasglowing 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 tothe 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 terribleGobies 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, andher 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 heartand 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.