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_The_ Ghosts _of their_ Ancestors
"_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
New York Fox Duffield & Co. 1906
Copyright, 1906, by Fox Duffield & Company
Published, March, 1906
The Trow Press, N. Y.
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_
There was a clanging, brassy melody upon the air. For three-score yearssince 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 bellsof old St. Paul's had begun their ringing like this:
"Loud and full voiced at eight o'clock sends good cheer abroad," said thetottering sexton. "Softer and softer, as folks turn into bed, and faintand sweet at midnight, when our dear Lord rises with the dawn." Cheerybells full of hope--gentle chimes, as if the holy mother were dreaming ofher babe. Joyous, jingling, jangling bells! Through the town their tonesdrifted, over the thousands of slate-colored roofs, now insistent on theBroadway, now lessening a little in some long winding alley, and thenfinally dying away on the bare Lispenard Meadows.
Vesey Street--the gentry street--heard them first. The bigwigs in the longago, with the help of Gracious George, built the church, and who had abetter right than their children to its voices. Calm and serene lay VeseyStreet with its rows of leafing elms. Over the dim confusion ofarchitectural forms slipped the moonlight in silver ribbons, seeming tomake sport of the grave, smug faces of the antiquated domiciles. Like aline of deserted dowagers waiting for some recalcitrant Sir Roger deCoverley, they stood scowling at one another. No longer linkboys andrunning footmen stuck brave lights into the well-painted extinguishers ateach doorstep. No longer fashion fluttered to their gates. The gallantswho had been wont to pass them with, "Lud! what a pretty house!" were mostof them asleep now on the green breast of mother England, forgetful ofthat wide thoroughfare, which had never reckoned life without them.
Into the parlor of Knickerbocker House, dubbed Knickerbocker Mansion someyears after the bibulous Sir William Howe had laid down his sceptre asruler of the town, the chorus of bells crashed.
"What a dastardly noise!" cried Jonathan Knickerbocker, throwing hisnewspaper over his head. "Can this Easter time never be kept without aninfernal bell bombilation? I shall call a meeting of the vestry--thatidiot Jenkins should be kept at home!"
The head of the Knickerbocker family turned irately in his chair andglared at his daughters. Three timid pairs of blinking eyes were raisedfrom short sacks in answer to his challenge, then lowered again over thewool. The fourth and fairest daughter of the house, seated on the walnutsofa in the bow-window, gave no heed to his vehemence but a suppressedsigh. With a final snort the _Gazette_ was picked up again. The Eastermelody was waning.
The Knickerbocker parlor--not the state parlor, which had long beenclosed--was a dismal place--so large that four candles and one Rumfordlamp made but a patch of brightness in the gloom. Most of the furniturewas ponderous and ugly, with two or three alien little chairs that lookedas if they might once have belonged to some light-hearted lover of theLouis. On the almost barren chimney-piece stood a pair of tall nankeenbeakers, sepulchrally reminiscent of buried Chinese years. Along the wallshung a score of mediocre portraits, the handiwork of the usurious limnerJohn Watson and his compatriot Hessilius. Spans of sunlit days had stolenevery tinge of carmine from their immobile and woodeny faces, leaving themthe drab color of time, in keeping with the room.
Above the cornice, near the sofa where Patricia Knickerbocker sat, hung anempty frame. The portrait it contained had been banished to the atticwhile her three eldest sisters were still in Wellington pantalets.
"The woman looks like a Jezebel," Jonathan had sputtered. "Och! thatleering smile." He tried to blot from his mind the stray leaves he knew ofher story, and the disturbing thought that she was of his blood. "Sheshall not remain with the likenesses of my ancestors!" he had told hissisters, who were over from Goby House.
When this descendant of the Knickerbockers spoke of his progenitors healways held his head a trifle more erect, and puffed out his pompousfigure, though, strange to relate, like many another worthy man of a laterday having the same foible, he knew very little about them. Of course hecould have told you that the lady over the east bookcase, wearing a bluetucker 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 threecircuits. Or if his digression were extended, there was his trump card,one of the first American Knickerbockers, labelled "The Friend of LordCornbury!" These were the firmest rocks in his family history, to which hecould climb in safety, thence to look down with scorn on thoseunfortunates beneath his social eminence. He was a Knickerbocker, ofKnickerbocker Mansion, Vesey Street, and a member of one of the oldestfamilies in York and America.
Patricia, smiling little Patricia, rummaging one day among the dust-binsunder the eaves, had found the banished portrait. Juma, the gray-woolednegro, a comparatively new member of the Knickerbocker household, who hadappointed himself her body-servant ever since his arrival at the mansion,was with her.
A faithful slave to old Miss Johnstone of Crown Street, Juma had beenforced by his mistress's death into new service. He was a picture ofebonized urbanity, a good specimen of the vanished race of Gotham blacks,gentler in manners and clearer in speech than their Southern cousins. Inhis youth he had been sent to one Jean Toussaint of Elizabethtown to learnthe art of hair-dressing. He could impart much knowledge of wigs to awigless age, and talked in a grandiloquent fashion of Spencers,Albemarles, and Lavants. Many a beau peruke and macaroni toupee his lithefingers curled and sprinkled with sweet flower-water. The voices of thefine people who were his visitors made constant music in his memory, andhis tongue was ever ready with anecdotes of wizened beauties and uncrownedcavaliers.
Juma was faithful to the period of his greatest splendor. Deep in hisheart he despised the home to which freedom and poverty had led him afterthe demise of his protectress. "Gold braid on company coat and silkstockings done ravel out in dese days. Knickerbockers talk quality, butdey ain't got quality mannahs--Missy Patsy is de only one of dem withtone."
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 relicsof his "ole Miss." Patricia always sang on the days when her sisters werevisiting their aunts on the bluff. Juma loved her, and during his fiveyears' residence in the family had many times taken her youthful mind intrain 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 Grahamsgive one or two every year, but father never notices them."
"Well, you jes' know how to behave," he chuckled. "Doan' yo' forget detricks your Uncle Juma taught yo'."
When the two had met in the attic that April day, Juma's spirits were asebullient as usual.
"How lovely she is, Juma! See, there is a blush on each cheek. Her pinkbrocade makes me think of a rose dancing in the wind."
Patricia stared into the canvas face before her and the lips seemed tocurve themselves into the shadow of a smile. "I know you were the fairestone of us," she whispered, "the fairest and the best."
"Dat's the real quality way of holding the head," vouchsafed Juma. "I'sepow'ful 'clined to think she