Part 4 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+p 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 cas.e.m.e.nts.
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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”_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 pa.s.sion 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
_Chapter Four_
[Ill.u.s.tration]
As the family neared the long unused state parlor the din grew louder--a rising treble of voices, ascending from hoa.r.s.e trumpet tones to a twittering falsetto, accompanied by a maddening persistent tapping of high heels on the smooth floor. The sounds of s.h.i.+vering gla.s.s 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.