Robert was very much encouraged by this letter because he had great
confidence in Astrology and in this man's ability. He decided to go
immediately to Florida for a rest and visit all the beautiful spots
and watering places that he could find, hoping to get some news of
Marie. Going directly to Palm Beach, Florida, he met some friends of
Conan Doyle's who were very much interested in spiritualism. They told
him that a famous spiritualist, Lady Bersford from England, had been
there, and that they believed she could help solve the problem. Robert
asked where he could find her and was told that she had gone to Ocala,
Florida, to visit Silver Springs and investigate the legend of Silver
Springs, the story about a beautiful young girl who drowned herself in
the Springs.
A Legend
(The following story combines the accuracies of fact with the romance
of fiction. Aunt Silly lived at Silver Springs until her death, about
sixteen years ago, and was seen by many who visited the Springs. It is
from the gifted pen of Mrs. Maley Bainbridge Crist):
Near Florida's celebrated Silver Springs lives an old negress, known
to the entire surrounding country as "Aunt Silly," whose claim to
being 110 years old is borne out by her appearance. Aunt Silly is
wrinkled and decrepit, and the wool peeping from her bandanaed head
is white as snow, while the blackness and weirdness of her face is
intensified by a heavy crop of snow-white beard. As long as the oldest
citizen of Ocala can remember Aunt Silly has looked just as ancient
as she does now; identified always with Silver Springs, and hobbling
about them from morning until night, leaning upon her short, thick
staff.
That she was a participant in a tragedy is known only to a very few of
Ocala's oldest citizens, and seldom referred to by any of them. In the
near vicinity of Ocala, when first it was settled, stood a splendid
old mansion owned by Capt. Harding Douglass, a South Carolinian of
considerable wealth. His only child was a son, who, with his mother's
beauty of countenance, had inherited her tender, shrinking nature,
and, like herself, was a slave to the old man's iron will. In the
beautiful little City of Ocala lived Bernice Mayo, whose blond beauty
won, at first sight, the heart of Claire Douglass. Although of
Virginia ancestry, Bernice was a true child of the "Land of Flowers,"
passionate and impulsive. Her eyes were blue and clear as the waters
of Lake Munroe, beside which she had spent her childhood, in the
fair little City of Sanford. Her hair was as golden as Florida's own
sunshine, and Florida's tropical splendor ran riot in her blood. For
six months Bernice Mayo and Claire Douglass were constant companions,
and Silver Springs was their favorite resort. For half a day at a time
they would drift about on the bosom of the splendid, placid curiosity
of nature.
Bernice seemed never to tire of going into the depths of the
subterranean world. "If I were a mermaid, Claire," she would say,
"and lived in yon crystal cavern, and some fair day I should wander
forth among the palmettos and mosses of the springs, and, sitting on
yonder ledge of rocks, should 'comb my golden hair with a shell,'
and your boat should come drifting by, and you were to see me in the
water beneath, would you love me well enough to plunge, plunge to the
depths beneath to woo me?" Then would Claire stop her merry chatter
with his kisses, and pledge to her his eternal love as they drifted
over the transparent mirror of water, pausing now and then to study
the rocks and shells, the mosses, palmettos, the fish, which were as
visible eighty feet below the transparent water as were the trees and
woodland about them. There is nothing fairer than Ocala's "Lover's
Lane," and yet no spot held for these young people the attraction of
Silver Springs, their constant trysting place. But there came a fatal
day, destined to separate them. A day wherein Claire Douglass declared
to his father his love for beautiful, penniless Bernice Mayo, and his
determination to make her his wife. Stormily, his father vowed it
should never be, and secretly planned a separation.
When Claire Douglass had been speedily dispatched abroad on important
business for his father, then it was that Bernice learned the truth,
and her proud, delicate nature lay crushed and bleeding beneath the
cruel blow and still more cruel separation.
Vainly she strove to rally; all life seemed but an empty blank to her.
A year dragged wearily by, and the scenes frequented by merry Bernice
Mayo knew her no more. Paler and thinner she daily grew. Fragile, she
was, as the white blossoms of her well-loved springs. The little chain
of gold that Claire had locked on her arm would have slipped across
the wasted, transparent hand, but for the ribbon that held its links.
One day (her last upon earth) the girl, by dint of desperate energy,
crept to Silver Springs. Even Aunt Silly was unprepared for the
white, emaciated little creature who tottered into her cabin and fell
fainting in her arms. Consciousness soon returned, but it was apparent
even to the old black woman that death had set its gray, unmistakable
seal upon the young face.
"Aunt Silly," gasped the girl, "I have come to you to die, and
you must obey my last request; the grave divulges no secrets. Ere
tonight's sun sets I shall be in heaven. This separation from the man
I love has been my death, but in that death we shall be united. I have
asked God, and He has heard me. But you, Aunt Silly, you must obey
my request. You love me; you will do as I ask. Tonight when the moon
comes out, row my body to Boiling Springs, and bury me there. You know
the spot--make no mistake. Do this, and God will attend to the rest."
"Good Gord A'mighty, chile, you think Aunt Silly am gwine tote dade
body off in the lonesomely night?" asked the old woman, her very teeth
chattering with the superstitious fear peculiar to her race. The girl
realized the risk of her plan being thwarted, and raising herself to a
sitting posture she seized the old woman's hands and fixed her dying
eyes full on her face.
"Aunt Silly," she gasped, "I am a dying woman; I am very near to God;
I have talked with Him, and He has answered me. My will has been
crushed in life, I swear it shall not in death. Before twenty-four
hours Claire Douglass shall join me in the crystal cavern of Silver
Springs. If you do not grant my request every spirit of evil shall
surround you. Palsied and blind you shall grow, and deaf--deaf to
every sound but the ghosts of the dead, which shall pursue you by day
and haunt you by night. Do you swear to obey my dying request, or will
you refuse me, and reap the prophecy of a dying woman, which shall
rest upon your cowardly head for refusing to obey God's will?"
The old woman was shaking like an aspen. Her eyes protruded with fear,
and great beads of perspiration rolled down her cheeks. The strength
of the dying girl's will had prevailed, and the old woman answered: "I
promises, honey; I promises."
It was a solemn and awful sight that night, witnessed alone by God and
nature; the boat, which drifted down Silver Springs in the moonlight,
bearing its two strange occupants--the one weird, bent, grotesque; the
other, so silent, so white, so pathetic, in its dead loveliness. Not
a leaf was stirring, not a sound heard, but the splash, splash of the
old woman's oars, as her boat, with its strange, beautiful burden,
drifted over the curious, transparent body of water; drifted until it
reached Boiling Springs, then veered about and stood still. Gently
and easily, as if it had been a babe, the old woman lifted the little
body. Something of her fear had departed in the placid smile of the
dead face. Tears rolled down her dusky face as she bent forward in
obedience to the girl's curious request. For a moment the body rocked
to and fro on the bosom of the water, upon which its happiest moments
had been spent. The dead face smiled, and the wealth of hair gleamed
in the moonlight like a sheen of gold. Every pebble was visible in the
depths below. Suddenly, as if by magic, the body began sinking. The
boiling of the spring had ceased, showing a peculiar little fissure in
the rock from whence all the strange body of water came. The fissure
slowly divided, received the dead body and closed again, shutting
every vestige of it from view.
"Gord A'mighty, dat chile a angel sho' nuff. She mus' done talked to
de Lawd; she knowed how all dat gwine to be," muttered the old woman,
as she rowed back to her cabin in the moonlight.
A mocking-bird on the opposite shore sent forth a flood of silvery
melody. "Hear dat now," muttered Aunt Silly; "dat bird done sendin'
forth de weddin' song o' de bridegroom. Come on, Claire Douglass, yo'
little bride am waitin' for you more pacifyin' den she waited many a
long day."
The day following the death of Bernice Mayo was one never to be
forgotten by the citizens of Ocala. Claire Douglass had just returned
after a year's absence. He found his beautiful cousin (whom his father
desired to become his wife) a guest at the home of his parents.
"Claire," said his father as they lingered over the breakfast table,
"I have a fine, new skiff at Silver Springs, and I wish you to take
your cousin for a row this morning; and, by the permission of you
young people, I shall make one of your party."
"Delightful, uncle," cried the girl; and Claire, while he turned a
trifle pale at the thought of returning to the spot where all that
had given color to his life had transpired, could only acquiesce.
Claire Douglass looked unusually handsome as the party drifted down
Silver Springs in the April sunshine, but there was a curious pallor
on his face, and the uncle and niece were left to carry on all the
conversation. What a contrast the blooming girl in April sunshine
bore to the one in the solemn moonlight, who had drifted over the
same water the evening before! As the skiff neared Boiling Springs
the party noted a little boat hovering over it. The boat was rowed by
Aunt Silly; and its other occupant was an old woman, whose eyes were
swollen with weeping. The skiff paused beside the little rowboat, and
the occupants of each gazed into the curious, transparent depths below.
Suddenly the niece cried out, "Oh, see, that looks like a hand; a
little human hand!" Plainer and more visible it grew, the little
white hand with its gold chain locked above the slender wrist. Ah,
little hand, Claire Douglass would have known you among ten thousand
hands! His face was white as death and he gasped as though choking.
All were intent upon the scene below. Suddenly the boiling of the
water ceased, and out upon a rock in its transparent depths, like a
broken, beautiful lily, lay Bernice Mayo, her golden hair floating
on the sand, her dead face smiling placidly, as if at last a halo of
peace had descended upon the tired spirit, and the broken heart had
found rest. With a wild cry that pierced even the heart of the mother,
who for the last time in life gazed upon the dead face of her child,
Claire Douglass dashed overboard, diving deeper, ever deeper, until he
caught in his arms the little figure of his dead love.
Then once more the rock divided and closed, shutting from view forever
the lovers, who lay locked in each other's embrace. And again the
water whirled and boiled in its mad fury, as if to defy the puny will
of him who would have separated what God had joined together.
As for the first time the secret bridal chamber of Silver Springs has
been made known to the world, it will be interesting to its future
visitors, as they approach that part of it known as "Boiling Springs,"
to note in the whir of the water beneath (the only part of the water
not perfectly placid) the constant shower of tiny, pearl-like shells
poured forth from the fissure in the rock, and which Aunt Silly says
are the jewels the angels gave Bernice Mayo upon her wedding morning
when her lover joined her in their fairy palace in Silver Springs.
There is, too, a curious flower growing in the springs--a flower with
leaf like a lily, and a blossom shaped like an orange blossom. Its
peculiar waxy whiteness and yellow petals are like Bernice Mayo's face
and hair, Aunt Silly says, and she calls them "Bernice Bridal Wreath."
There is a legend among the young people of Ocala that a woman
presented with one of these blossoms will become a bride ere the close
of the year.