The next morning dawned gloriously, and in due time the carriages
reached the picnic-grounds--just a mile past Suicide Place--a
picturesque grove on the banks of a river. There was a pavilion and
music for dancing, with every device for pleasure.
And Floy was there with the rest, charming in a white duck suit and big
hat, self-possessed as a young princess, and not one whit abashed when
Otho led her to his party, and said, graciously:
“You know my sister Maybelle, don’t you? She has been away a great deal
lately, but she remembers little Fly-away Floy, and this is my friend,
Mr. St. George Beresford.”
They all bowed graciously, and then the quartet sat down together on
the river-bank, for all this condescension was the plot that wicked
Otho had unfolded to his sister that morning. Other couples joined
them, while some danced in the pavilion, and still others swung in the
hammocks under the shady trees.
They talked lightly and desultory on frothy subjects, as people at
picnics usually do, and barely any one but Beresford remembered
afterward that it was Otho Maury who started the subject of bravery
and courage, and contrasted the difference in man and woman on these
qualities of mind and strength. He exclaimed, finally:
“I adore courage and bravery in man or woman. Indeed, I would not marry
a girl who was a coward--who ran shrieking from a mouse, or trembled
at the thought of a burglar--but I could worship a fearless girl; such
a one, for instance, as would dare to spend a night alone in a haunted
house.”
The pretty girls who heard him all shrieked and shuddered with
dismay--all except Floy, who shrugged her pretty shoulders, and said,
vivaciously:
“Pshaw! that is not any great thing to do. I shouldn’t be afraid to
stay in a haunted house all night.”
“Aren’t you afraid of ghosts, like most young girls?” asked Otho,
incredulously.
“No, I’m not afraid, for I don’t believe in spirits.”
Maybelle laughed tauntingly.
“You are joking, Floy. You wouldn’t dare stay alone all night in
Suicide House--now, would you?”
The girls all applauded Maybelle, sneering at Floy’s pretense
of bravery, until the impulsive girl saw that they were overtly
challenging her to a proof of her courage.
Flushing with anger, her blue eyes blazing with defiance, she cried,
stormily:
“I am not a coward, Maybelle Maury, and I am not afraid of anything,
ghost or human; and I will prove it to you all by staying alone at
Suicide House to-night!”
“No, no; you must not!” cried a few voices, frightened at the thought
of what she had been goaded to do.
But Floy’s high spirit was up in arms, and she would not be dissuaded
from her purpose.
“I shall surely do it, and no one shall prevent me!” she cried; adding:
“When we go home to-night, you may leave me at Suicide Place, and I
will lock myself in, for I have the keys with me now, and you can go
by and tell auntie I stayed all night with one of the girls. In the
morning you may send a committee to escort me home in triumph. Why do
you all look so pale and frightened? There is no danger, I tell you;
I’ve been over the house a hundred times alone, and the only ghosts are
rats. It will be rare fun staying there all night!”
No one could dissuade her, so they gave up trying. Everybody was
sorry for it, but Otho and his sister, who exchanged furtive looks of
satisfaction.
St. George Beresford had not spoken a word during the whole
conversation, though his eager, admiring eyes had scarcely left Floy’s
lovely flower-like face. He was silent, abstracted, bitterly piqued at
Floy’s pronounced indifference to himself.
She had not seemed to see him since the first glance in which she had
acknowledged their introduction by Otho Maury, and of course he could
not know that it was because Otho had said to her at the cottage gate
last night:
“My sister Maybelle will be at the picnic to-morrow with her handsome
betrothed--the rich New Yorker she is to marry this fall. She is as
jealous of him as a little Turk, and it makes her angry for any other
girl to even look at him.”
He had counted rightly on Floy’s high sense of honor.
She was a mischievous little madcap, but she respected Maybelle’s
rights, and feigned indifference to Beresford, although she could not
avoid noticing the ardent glance he threw in her direction, and she
thought, indignantly:
“No wonder Maybelle is jealous, for I can see already that he’s a
wretched flirt. I won’t even look at him, though he is awfully, awfully
handsome!”
So with a sigh, whose subtle meaning she could not understand, she
turned her back on the wretched Beresford, and entered readily into an
animated conversation with Otho, maddening her silent admirer with such
keen jealousy that he could bear it no longer.
“Let us go and dance,” he said to Maybelle, hoarsely.
“Oh, I’m too lazy to move. Go and find another partner,” she laughed.
“But I’m not acquainted with any of the girls here.”
“Otho, go along and introduce him to some girls, and I’ll stay with
Floy and tell her about my lovely trip to Europe last year.”
Beresford, disappointed in a faint hope that she might have proffered
Floy to him as a partner, went away with Otho, and Maybelle made
herself agreeable to her companion.
At last she observed, patronizingly:
“You’ve never been _anywhere_, have you, Floy?”
“Not since mamma brought me a little girl back to the farm,” Floy
answered, flushing sensitively, for she felt the sting in Maybelle’s
patronizing tone.
But the latter continued, gently and purringly:
“It’s too bad your having to stay with those poor, hard-working
people, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you like to support yourself, Floy?”
“I should not know how to earn a penny,” murmured Floy, who was like
the naughty Brier-Rose of the poem:
“Whene’er a thrifty matron this idle maid espied,
She shook her head in warning and scarce her wrath could hide;
For girls were made for housewives, for spinning-wheel and loom,
And not to drink the sunshine and the flowers’ sweet perfume.
“But out she skipped the meadows o’er and gazed into the sky,
Her heart o’erbrimmed with gladness, she scarce herself knew why;
And to a merry tune she hummed: ‘Oh, Heaven only knows
Whatever will become of the naughty Brier-Rose?’”
“Suppose I tell you what papa was saying about you last night?”
continued Maybelle.
“Yes,” Floy answered, helplessly.
“He was saying that he needed two new salesgirls in his big dry-goods
store in New York, and he wondered if any girls in Mount Vernon would
like to go. He said he had thought of you, and that maybe old John
Banks would be glad to have you find a situation and help earn your own
living.”
Floy reddened, paled, then gasped:
“I don’t believe Uncle John would like it at all. He loves me--he and
auntie--and he doesn’t mind taking care of me.”
“But you’ll tell him of this offer, won’t you, dear, and you’ll think
of it yourself? Papa says he’ll keep the place open a week for you,”
said Maybelle, who had suggested the plan to Mr. Maury herself.
“I’ll tell Uncle John,” promised Floy; but she seemed tongue-tied after
that, and went moodily away from Maybelle’s vicinity to join some other
girls, keeping so resolutely away that they did not meet again until
that afternoon, when most of the dancers were resting after dinner on
the banks of the beautiful river.
At heart Floy was cruelly wounded by Maybelle’s patronizing, but she
was too proud to show her pain. Once St. George Beresford ventured to
seek her for a partner in the dance, but she refused so curtly that he
turned away indignantly, wondering why she was so cold to him while so
kind to others.
“She has plenty of smiles for that shallow Otho. I’d like to wring his
little black neck!” he thought, angrily.
Otho was a cur, indeed, but he was slight and dark and elegant--one
of those types that very young girls rave over. Beresford saw that he
stood high in Floy’s good graces, and began to hate him accordingly.
When the couples paired off on the river-bank beneath the shady trees,
there was Maybelle and Beresford, and next to them Floy and Otho.
Floy was bright and restless, feeling Beresford’s gaze ever seeking
hers, and wondering why it thrilled her so when she knew it was not
right for him to look at any other than Maybelle, his beautiful,
dark-eyed betrothed.
She turned her back on him rather rudely, and exclaimed to Otho:
“People are very foolish and superstitious. They are always going on
about Suicide Place, and saying that it must claim another victim soon;
and they are even hinting that I will be the doomed one.”
“That is nonsense. I am sure you are too strong-minded to yield to such
a temptation,” Otho replied, reassuringly.
St. George could not help listening to the sound of the musical voice
and watching the beautiful profile when it turned toward him in her
animated talk.
Heavens, how lovely she was! What eyes, what lips, what dimples, what
a mesh of curly, golden hair in which to entangle a man’s throbbing
heart! And yet it was not simply her beauty that inthralled him, and he
knew it. She had that psychical charm we call personal magnetism, that
is like the perfume to the flower and seems to endow it with a soul.
He heard her continue, almost defiantly, as if annoyed:
“I wish they would not talk about it, for it makes me angry. Why should
I kill myself? I’m young and gay, and, in a way, happy! And yet,”
musingly, “I suppose, after all, that the terrible taint of that mania
is in my blood. I am not superstitious, but perhaps it may conquer me
after all, who knows? Do you suppose I shall ever kill myself?”
“I hope not. You would break a dozen hearts if you did, mine among the
rest,” Otho replied, banteringly, with a killing glance.
She continued, meditatively:
“They will go on expecting me to commit suicide, of course, and
always selecting the old farm as the scene of the fifth tragedy. Why
should I not choose some other scene for the final act? This river,
say,” pointing to it as it rippled below the bank, dark and deep and
dangerous in its beauty.
Laughing, she rose to her feet, and he said:
“It seems that fate always demands the sacrifice within the gates of
the grim old place.”
“Do you think so? Well, I shall defy the fate to which I was born,
and break the charm of Suicide Place. If, following the taint in my
blood, I must indeed kill myself, I shall disappoint everybody in the
location. It shall not be at the old farm, but--_here_!”
Then all at once the startling tragedy happened.
Floy stepped to the edge of the bank with a strange, mocking laugh on
her red lips, and, as if the terrible mania had seized on her suddenly,
red-handed and implacable as fate itself, she threw up her arms above
her beautiful head, and leaped into the river that divided hungrily to
receive the girlish form, then closed again greedily over its prey.