Chapter Two
n 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.