“Oh, we hope not!” they answered, soothingly, and raised her gently,
placing her on a soft couch by the window, where the summer breeze
could caress her pale brow.
“Oh, how I have prayed and prayed for some one to come,” she continued.
“Ever since midnight I have lain here fainting and reviving, fainting
and reviving, too weak to rise, and longing for water to cool my
parched throat. Oh, thank you, thank you, how sweet and cool it is!
Oh, what a wretched day! When I heard your steps and voices coming, I
fainted from pure joy!”
She did not seem surprised at their coming. Perhaps she guessed in some
way at the reason.
Beresford stooped over her with anguish in his eyes.
“I must ask you one question,” he cried, “and as you hope for Heaven,
if you die, I implore you, answer it truly. Is Florence Fane in this
house?”
“She is not. That is true,” answered Maybelle, growing paler at this
reminder of her successful rival.
“Where is she, then? Do you know?”
“I swear I do not know,” she replied, faintly, and he read truth in her
beautiful eyes.
She was strangely beautiful in her pallor and pain, and Alva thought
for a moment how strange it was that her brother had not loved
charming Maybelle before he met Floy.
But in the next moment she sighed to herself:
“There is no accounting for Love’s vagaries. I am glad my brother loved
little Floy instead of imperious Maybelle.”
Beresford looked at the poor girl with pitying eyes. The knowledge of
her hopeless love for himself softened his heart, and he said, gently:
“Why did you attempt this terrible deed? What malign influence drove
you to self-murder?”
She shuddered and closed her eyes. He thought she was going to faint
again, and reproached himself for tormenting her by such questions.
But Maybelle opened her eyes again, and said, solemnly:
“I will tell you the grim secret of Suicide Place, for perhaps I am
dying, and the story should be known, and the old building torn down to
set at rest an unquiet spirit. Floy knows it all, I am sure, but I do
not think she would ever tell.”
“You may exhaust yourself,” he objected, though his curiosity was on
the _qui vive_.
“No; I shall not talk more than is necessary.” She swallowed some more
wine held to her lips by his hand, and began: “Perhaps you have heard
that the owners of this property--Floy’s ancestors--were very rich long
ago?”
“Yes, I have heard of old Jasper Nellest who was so miserly, and yet
died poor, and left his descendants nothing but this property that
seemed afterward to be banned by a curse,” he replied.
“Yes, that is the gist of the story,” answered Maybelle, sighing.
“That old man died rich, but he had turned all he owned into yellow,
shining, golden coin. But he did not mean to cheat his heirs of their
inheritance, only he died suddenly before he could tell them where the
treasure was hidden. Well, his punishment is to haunt his old home,
vainly trying to reveal the secret he carried to the grave.”
“Can this be true?” cried Alva in wonder.
“It is true,” answered Maybelle. “I have seen him again and again, and
it is horrible!”
She paused and glanced half fearfully at the door, muttering:
“But, no, no--he will be shocked at the evil he has wrought, he will
not venture back for long, long years. It has always been so, they say.”
They listened eagerly, devouring every word, wondering if her strange
story could be true.
“You doubt me!” cried Maybelle, reading their faces. “Well, I am too
weak to waste words trying to convince you. I can only tell what I know
in the briefest fashion.”
She rested a little while, then resumed her story:
“This old man--this miser--has surely hidden his gold somewhere in
this house, but he has not the power of speech, only of strange,
demoniacal laughter. It is this way: Some night in wandering through
the long corridor--always the long corridor--you come upon an old man
chuckling, gibbering to himself. You stop, you stare in terror, and
he spreads abroad his lean hands. You see grouped about him, as in a
golden haze, open chests of golden coin--think of it, _great chests
of gold!_--and the sight fires you with a mad longing to possess the
treasure whose existence you thus discover. You gaze spell-bound, but
the hideous old miser begins to laugh with hideous mirth, gloating over
his wealth, till you fly in deadly terror from the scene. But, alas!
only to return, goaded by an awful desire to search the old place over
for the missing gold. You search in vain, and the old miser seems to
gloat over your failures with his demon laughter; and then--then--the
rage, the fear, the baffled desire for the treasure--seem to combine to
drive one mad, so that this”--she shuddered as she pointed at Otho’s
still form--“comes naturally as the awful _finale_. He--Otho--found it
all out while seeking Floy, and persuaded me to come with him to seek
for the chests of gold. Alas, alas!” and with a long, shuddering sigh
she closed her eyes again.
Alva stroked the dark tresses back from the damp brow, and they looked
at each other, she and St. George, with wondering eyes that questioned:
“Can this story be true?”
The young man looked from the chamber of horror out at the quiet
sunset skies, and it seemed to him incredible that such things could be.
But in the face of all that had gone before, and of this present
tragedy, he was not prepared to deny anything. He could only say to
Alva:
“It is a strange story.”
Everything began to grow dark in the room before Maybelle spoke again.
She looked wistfully at Beresford, sighing:
“I do not wish to die now, though all the best things of life have
slipped away from me. But--but I seem to be sinking away.”
“Have you any last words--any wish?” he began.
“Yes, one wish.” She seemed to forget Alva’s presence, or not to care.
“Will you--kiss me--just once?--I have loved you so!”
Her voice was pathetic in its hopeless yearning, and Alva motioned him
to obey. She knew that noble little Floy would not grudge this one
caress to her dying rival.
So Beresford gave the one kiss that was a joyful memory in all
Maybelle’s future years.
For she did not die as she foreboded.
The room was filled presently with a curious crowd who heard in wonder
the strange story, and then carried the dead and the living home again
through the darkening twilight.
Otho and his father were buried side by side, and kind friends cared
for the helpless Maury family. Mrs. Vere de Vere, always Maybelle’s
stanch friend, adopted the girl as a daughter, so she never missed the
wealth she prized so much.
In time Maybelle made the grand match Mrs. Vere de Vere had schemed for
so long, but it was long years first, and when she married the rich
politician, it was for ambition, not love. All her proud husband’s
caresses were not worth as much to her as the memory of one pitying
kiss.