NOTHING OR SOMETHING?
Meanwhile, down on the sands, three anxious-eyed girls were holding
counsel with an equally disturbed matron.
“When did you see Patsy last?” Miss Martha was inquiring in lively
alarm.
“She was lying in the sand when I started to swim out to Mab and
Nellie,” replied Bee. “When I got to them, Mab began splashing water on
me and we had a busy time for a few minutes just teasing each other.
Then I looked toward the beach. I was going to call out to Patsy to
come on in, but she wasn’t there. I supposed, of course, she’d gone up
to the bath house to take off her bathing suit and dress again. She had
said she was tired.”
“How long ago was that?” Miss Martha asked huskily.
“An hour, I’m afraid; perhaps longer,” faltered Bee. “We’ve looked all
along the beach and called to her. We looked in the bath house first
before we told you, Miss Martha. We hated to frighten you. We kept
expecting she’d come back. We thought maybe she was hiding from us just
for fun and would pounce out on us all of a sudden.”
“You should have told me at once, Beatrice.”
Worry over her niece’s strange disappearance lent undue sternness to
Miss Carroll’s voice.
“I--I--am--sorry.”
Bee was now on the verge of tears.
“So am I,” was the grim concurrence. “At all events, Patsy must be
found and immediately. I shall not wait for you girls to change your
bathing suits. I shall walk back to the house at once. You are to go
into the bath house and stay there until my brother comes for you. He
will bring men with him who will search the woods behind the beach.”
“Won’t you let me try again along the edge of jungle, Miss Martha,”
pleaded Bee. “I won’t go far into it. I’ll just skirt it and keep
calling out----”
“Who-oo!” suddenly supplemented a clear, high voice.
It had an electrical effect upon the dismayed group. Out from the
jungle and onto the beach darted a small, bare-footed, white-clad
figure and straight into the midst of a most relieved company.
“Patricia Carroll, _where_ have you been?” demanded Miss Martha
sternly. “No; don’t try to smooth things over by hugging me. I am
_very_ angry with you for disobeying me.”
Nevertheless, Miss Martha made only a feeble attempt to disengage
herself from Patsy’s coaxing arms.
“Now, Auntie, don’t be cross. A Patsy in hand is worth two in the
jungle,” saucily paraphrased the unabashed culprit. “I’ve been as safe
as safe could be. I’ve really had a wonderful time. I was so interested
I forgot that very likely you might miss me and be a little worried.”
“_A little worried!_”
Miss Martha raised two plump hands in a despairing gesture.
“Why, yes. I----”
“Do you know how long you’ve been gone?” was the severe question. “Long
enough to set us all nearly distracted wondering what had become of
you. Really, Patsy, I think you’ve behaved very inconsiderately.”
“I’m sorry, dearest Auntie; truly I am. I didn’t mean to be gone so
long. I saw her and before I knew it I was following her as fast as I
could run. She came out of the jungle after the book.”
“Saw her? Do you mean our----” Mabel began excitedly.
“Wood nymph,” Patsy finished triumphantly. “I surely do. I not only
_saw_ her. I talked with her.”
“I might have known it,” came disapprovingly from Miss Carroll. “I
should have set my foot down firmly in the first place about this girl.
I thought you too sensible by far to race off into a snake-infested
jungle, bare-footed, at that, after this young savage. I see I was
mistaken.”
“She’s not a savage, Aunt Martha.” Patsy rallied to defense of her new
friend. “She’s a perfect darling. She’s Spanish, but she speaks really
good English in such a quaint, pretty way. She likes me and I like her,
and we’re friends. We’ve shaken hands on that.”
“What is her name, Patsy, and where does she live?” eagerly asked
Eleanor.
“Her name is Dolores. I don’t know where she lives,” confessed Patsy.
“I asked her but she wouldn’t tell me. She said it was forbidden. I
asked her to come to Las Golondrinas to see us, but she said that was
forbidden, too. She read your book, Auntie. I told you she wasn’t
ignorant.”
“What did she say about the ‘Oriole’?” interposed Bee, before
Miss Carroll could frame an adequate reply to Patsy’s astounding
announcement.
“I----Why, the idea! I forgot to ask her,” stammered Patsy. “I saw her
pick up the book and run away with it. I started after her. Then I fell
almost on that horrible snake and----”
“Snake!” went up in shocked unison from four throats.
“Why, yes.” Patsy colored, then grinned boyishly. “I was going to tell
you about it in a minute. I caught my foot in some vines and pitched
into the bushes. I stirred up a rattler. It began to sing and Dolores
ran to me and dragged me away from the place before it had time to bite
me. Then she killed it. It was as thick as my wrist and eight feet
long. She said it was a diamond----”
“I must say you have very peculiar ideas of safety,” interrupted her
aunt.
Despite the dry satire of her tones, Miss Martha was feeling rather
sick over Patsy’s near disaster. In consequence, she was inclined
toward tardy appreciation of the “young savage.”
“This girl,” she continued in a dignified but decidedly mollified
voice. “I feel that we ought to do something for her. You say she
insists that it is forbidden her to come to Las Golondrinas. Did she
explain why?”
“No. I wanted awfully to ask her, but I felt sure that she wouldn’t
tell me a thing. There’s a mystery connected with her. I know there is.”
“Nonsense!” Miss Martha showed instant annoyance at this theory. “I
dare say her parents have merely forbidden her to trespass upon the
property of strangers. I have been told that these persons known down
South as ‘poor whites’ still feel very resentful toward Northerners on
account of the Civil War. The old folks have handed down this hatred to
the younger generations. This girl’s parents have no doubt learned that
we are from the North.”
“But such people as these poor whites are Americans with American
ancestors. Dolores is Spanish. Besides, her father and mother are dead.
She said so.”
Patsy went on to repeat the meager account Dolores had given of
herself, ending with the girl’s allusion to the mysterious “she” of
whom she appeared to stand in such lively dread.
“Very unsatisfactory,” commented her aunt when Patsy had finished her
narration. “Understand, Patsy, I am grateful to this girl for the
service she did you. As for the girl herself----”
Miss Martha’s pause was eloquent of doubt.
“She’s perfectly sweet,” insisted Patsy with some warmth.
“Nevertheless, you know nothing of her beyond what she has chosen
to tell you,” firmly maintained Miss Carroll. “I don’t approve of
her dodging about in the woods like a wild young animal. For all you
know this ‘she’ may have been put to a great deal of uneasiness by
the girl’s will-o’-the-wisp behavior. She may be so headstrong and
disobedient as to require the adoption of strong measures.”
“She’s not that sort of girl,” Patsy again defended. “She’s gentle and
dear and lovable. When she smiles her face lights up just beautifully.
Mostly, though, she’s terribly sober. Her voice is so soft and sweet.
Only it makes one feel like crying.”
“Hmm!” The ejaculation was slightly skeptical. “She seems to have
completely turned your head, Patricia. I suppose you will give me no
peace until I have seen her for myself. I am a fairly good judge of
character, however. It will not take me long to decide whether she is a
proper person for you to cultivate.”
“Then come with me into the woods to-morrow,” eagerly challenged Patsy.
“I promised to meet her there, at a certain place, and bring the girls.
I’m not the least bit afraid you won’t like Dolores. I know that you
will.”
“What! flounder through that jungle and risk snake bite? No, indeed!
Furthermore, I forbid you girls to do so.”
“Then we can’t see her!” Patsy cried out disappointedly. “I told you
she said she was afraid to meet us on the beach. Listen, dearest and
bestest Auntie. As we go back over the road to the house, I’ll show
you the place where Dolores wants us to meet her. It’s only a little
way off the road and easy to reach. There isn’t the least bit of
danger from snakes. There’s a kind of natural aisle between the trees
that leads to it. Dolores brought me back over it, so I know what I’m
talking about.”
“You may point it out to me as we go back to the house,” was the
nearest approach to consent which Miss Carroll would give. “Now all of
you must hurry to the bath house and make up for lost time. It will be
at least two o’clock before we reach home. I will wait for you here.
Don’t stop to talk, but hurry.”
Once in the bath house, however, the Wayfarers’ tongues wagged
incessantly as they speedily prepared for the homeward hike.
Very naturally the conversation centered on Dolores, of whom Patsy
continued to hold forth in glowing terms.
“Wait until Aunt Martha sees her,” she confidently predicted. “She
can’t help liking our wood nymph. She was a tiny bit peeved when I
said that I knew there was a mystery about Dolores. There is, too. I’m
sure of it. She’s not headstrong or disobedient, but she _is_ terribly
unhappy. The person she lives with, that horrible ‘she,’ I suppose,
must be awfully hateful to her.”
“Do you think we could find out for ourselves where she lives?” Bee
asked earnestly. “Then we might be able to help her. She may need
help very badly. Your father said that she might be the daughter of a
fisherman.”
“We’ll try to find out.” Patsy spoke with quick decision. “Day after
to-morrow we’ll make Dad take us to where those fisher folks live.
Maybe we’ll find her there. Don’t say a word about it when you meet her
to-morrow. We’ll just keep it dark and do a little sleuthing of our
own.”
Her companions agreeing with Patsy that this would be an excellent
plan, the quartette rapidly finished dressing, locked the door of the
bath house behind them and joined Miss Carroll on the beach.
“There’s the place where we are to meet Dolores, Auntie,” informed
Patsy when the party reached the point on the road where she had left
her new friend. “It’s right beyond those oaks. You can see for yourself
that the walking is good.”
“It isn’t quite so bad as I had expected,” Miss Martha grudgingly
admitted. “Since you are so determined to introduce this girl to me, I
may as well resign myself to taking this walk with you to-morrow.”
This being as good as a promise, wily Patsy accepted it as such and
said no more on the subject. Added discussion of it might result in a
change of mind on her aunt’s part.
Reaching the house, however, a most unpleasant surprise lay in wait
for the party. To see Mammy Luce standing in the entrance to the patio
was not an unusual sight. To see her stationed there, however, her
bulky form swathed in an ancient linen duster, a shapeless black hat,
decorated with a depressed-looking ostrich plume jammed down upon her
gray wool, was another matter. More, in one hand was a section of a
turkey red tablecloth, tied together at the four corners and bulging
with her personal belongings. In the other hand she held a green
cotton umbrella which she raised in a kind of fantastic salute as the
Wayfarers approached the entrance.
“I’se gwine away fum here, I is,” she rumbled. “I ain’t gwine stay in
no house where sperrits come sneakin’ aroun’. I done seen one this
mawnin’.”
“What does this mean, Mammy Luce?” Miss Martha took majestic command of
the situation. “You have no right to leave me like this without giving
notice. Now tell me exactly what the trouble is.”
“I done tell yoh a’ready, Missis. I done seen a sperrit. I wuz bakin’
a cake, I wuz, in de kitchen. I done looks up from de oben an’ I seen
a long, tall, ole white sperrit a-sneakin’ for de back stairs. I near
fell daid, I did. When I come to, I wuz shakin’ like a leaf. So I jes’
put mah traps togedder quick an’ now I’se gwine. I’se been awaitin’ to
tell yoh an ax yoh fer mah wages.”
“There are no such things as ‘spirits,’ Mammy Luce,” Miss Carroll
informed the frightened servant. “You only thought you saw one.”
Alarmed at the prospect of losing an excellent cook, Miss Martha
proceeded to do her utmost to convince the old woman that her visitant,
provided she really had seen an apparition, was not supernatural.
“I seen it. I ain’t blind. I seen it,” Mammy Luce doggedly reiterated.
“Yoh cain’t tell this niggah it wuzn’t no sperrit, ’cause it wuz.”
“Much more likely it was one of the maids who dressed up in a sheet
on purpose to frighten you,” was Miss Martha’s practical view of the
matter. “Where are Celia and Emily?”
“Em’ly she am upstaihs somewhar. She don’t know nuffin’ ’bout it, an’
this am Celia’s day off. Dey am good girls an’ don’t go for to skair
ole Mammy Luce. ’Sides, this yeah sperrit wuz ’bout seben foot high. It
wuzn’t no _pusson_. It ain’t no use talkin’, Mis’ Carroll, ’cause I’se
gwine ter git out fore dat sperrit gits after this niggah. It ain’t no
fun to be daid an’ I ain’t gwine to be it.”
Further argument on the part of not only Miss Martha but the girls as
well proved futile. Mammy Luce had but one thought. That thought was
to put distance between herself and Las Golondrinas. The substantial
increase of wages Miss Carroll felt impelled to offer her did not
interest the superstitious old woman.
“I jes’ want what’s acomin’ to muh an’ git out,” she declared with
finality. “I’se gwine ober yander ’bout three mile toh see mah brudder.
He’ll hitch up his ole yaller mule an’ tote ole Luce toh the station.”
“Go upstairs, Patsy, to my room and bring me my handbag. It is in the
tray of my trunk. Here is the key.”
From the white crocheted bag swinging from one arm, Miss Carroll took a
small brass key which she handed to Patsy.
As she passed through the patio and thence on upstairs, recollection of
the curious impression she had received that morning in walking through
the portrait gallery came back to Patsy.
She had been absolutely sure at the moment that the pictured cavalier
had moved. Mammy Luce, it seemed, was equally sure that she had seen a
“sperrit.” The question that now obtruded itself in Patsy’s mind was,
had she and Mammy Luce seen _nothing_, or had both of them really seen
_something_?