Chase Josephine - Patsy Carroll Under Southern Skies

With this announcement Patsy turned and strolled from the room. The gallery to which she referred was in the nature of a short corridor, extending between the second-floor sitting-room and ending at the corridor on which were situated sleeping rooms which the Wayfarers occupied. It had evidently served as a picture gallery for several generations of Feredas. Its walls were lined with a heterogeneous collection of oil paintings, largely landscape and studies in still life. At least half of one side of it, however, was devoted strictly to portraits. It was before this particular section that Patsy halted.

Two days had elapsed since the Wayfarers had made port at Las Golondrinas. On the evening of their arrival, a storm had come up, bursting over the old house in all its tropical fury. Following it, rain had set in and for two days had continued to fall in a steady, discouraging downpour that made out-door excursions impossible for the time being.

Now, on the third morning since their arrival, the sun again shone gloriously, in skies of cerulean blue, and the air was heavy with the sweetness of rain-washed blossoms. It was an ideal morning to spend out of doors, and Patsy was impatient to start on an exploring tour of the estate.

During the two days in which the Wayfarers had been kept indoors by the rain, they had become thoroughly acquainted with the old house. They had wandered about it from cellar to roof, marveling at its utter unlikeness to any other house in which they had ever set foot. Its somber, spacious rooms with their highly polished floors and queer, elaborately carved, foreign-looking furniture of a by-gone period, evoked volleys of wondering comment and speculation. The cool patio with its silver-spraying fountain, the long windows opening out onto picturesque balconies and the dim stone corridors, all held for them the very acme of romance. It was like being set down in a world which they had known only in fiction.

Each girl had found some one particular object on which to fix her special admiration. Eleanor went into ecstasies over a huge, carved-leather chest that stood in the sitting-room. Beatrice was enthusiastic over a heavy mahogany book-case filled with old Spanish volumes, bound in boards and parchment. She loudly deplored her inability to read Spanish and announced her intention of tackling the fascinating volumes with the aid of a Spanish-English dictionary which Mabel had brought along. Mabel was vastly impressed by a high, frowning old desk with many drawers and pigeon-holes. She was perfectly sure, she declared, that it must contain a secret drawer, and in consequence spent the great part of an afternoon in an unavailing hunt for it.

Patsy found unending delight in the portrait section of the picture gallery. The dark-eyed, tight-lipped men and women who stared down at her from the wall filled her with an intense curiosity regarding who they were and how long it had been since they had lived and played their parts in the history of the Feredas.

Undoubtedly they were all Feredas. Of unmistakably Spanish cast of countenance, they bore a decided family resemblance to one another. The difference in the style of dress worn by the pictured folk proclaimed them to be of many generations. How far removed from the present day, she did not know. She was of the opinion that some of them must have lived at least two hundred years ago. She was very sure that one portrait, that of a man, must have been painted even earlier than that.

It was this portrait in particular which most fascinated her. Hung in the center of the section and framed in tarnished gilt, it depicted the full length figure of a Spanish cavalier. Patsy thought he might easily have been one of the intrepid, Latin adventurers who accompanied Ponce de Leon on his unsuccessful quest into Florida for the fabled Fountain of Youth.

As a gallant of long ago, the man in the picture instantly arrested her attention. The thin, sinister face above the high Spanish ruff repelled her, however. The bright, bird-like eyes, the long, aquiline nose and the narrow lips, touched with a mocking smile, combined to make a countenance of such intense cruelty as filled her with a curious sense of terror. It was as if the sharp, black eyes followed her, as she moved along from picture to picture. There was a peculiar, life-like quality about the painting which gave her the uncomfortable feeling that the sinister cavalier might step down from the canvas at any moment.

Nevertheless she could not refrain from stopping to look at him every time she passed through the corridor. She was convinced that he must have been the first Fereda who landed in the New World and that he had a record which might well match his malevolently smiling face. It piqued her not a little to reflect, that, who he was and what he had been would in all probability ever remain a mystery to her.

Strolling into the corridor that morning to study again the provoking object of her curiosity, Patsy wondered how the granddaughter of old Manuel de Fereda could ever have been content to turn over the contents of Las Golondrinas to strangers. She wondered what had become of her. She was undoubtedly the only one who knew the identity of the painted cavalier. Patsy decided that she would ask her father to write Mr. Haynes, the agent, from whom he had purchased the property, asking him for Eulalie Fereda’s address. Once she had obtained it, Patsy fully intended to write to the Spanish girl for information concerning the painted cavalier.

Wrapped in meditation, she did not hear Beatrice’s light approaching footsteps until her friend had traversed half of the corridor.

“Oh, Bee!” she hailed, as the latter paused beside her. “I’m going to try to get Eulalie Fereda’s address from Mr. Haynes, and then write her about this picture. It seems queer that she allowed all these portraits of her family to be sold with the house, now doesn’t it? I certainly shouldn’t care to see the pictures of my respected ancestors pass into the hands of strangers.”

“Perhaps she’d lived here so long with her grandfather that she’d grown tired of him and all the rest of the Fereda tribe,” hazarded Bee. “Imagine how lonely it would be for a young girl in this gloomy old house. It is gloomy, you know. We don’t mind it because there are a crowd of us. It all seems just quaint and romantic to us.”

“All except Auntie,” reminded Patsy, smiling. “She says that the whole house ought to be done over from top to bottom and that she intends to come down here next fall and see to it herself. I think she only half means it, though. She likes it the way it is, just as much as we do, but she won’t admit it. Aunt Martha has a real love for the romantic, but she tries hard not to let any one know it.”

“The furniture in this house must be really valuable,” Bee said seriously. “Most of it is antique. Goodness knows how old that desk in the sitting-room is; and that carved-leather chest and the book-case. Why, those books alone must be worth a good deal. A book collector would rave over them. I wish I knew something about rare volumes and first editions. If I were your father I’d send for an expert and have the collection valued.”

“I’ll tell him about it,” nodded Patsy. “Only he won’t bother to do it while we’re here. He’s more interested in having the grounds put in order than anything else. He says the orange groves are not worth much because they’ve been neglected for so long. With care, he thinks they’ll do better next year. We’ve come down here too late for the real fruit season, you know. We should have been here in January or February for that. Anyway, he didn’t buy this place as a money-making venture. He thought it would be a nice winter home for us.”

“I’m lucky to have the chance to see it,” congratulated Beatrice. “If ever I become a writer, I shall put Las Golondrinas into a story. That’s a pretty name; Las Golondrinas.”