Lord John in New York

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

Fortunately there was little traffic on the country road at that hour, and we did the eight miles in about eight minutes. I thanked my lucky stars that the hold-up train had not moved; and my heart bounded when I saw Maida among a number of passengers who had descended to wander about during the delay. She in a grey travelling dress and small winged toque, walked alone at a distance from the others. Here back was turned to me, but she was unmistakable, with the morning sun ringing her hair with a saint's halo. I tried not to frighten her by appearing too abruptly, but she gave a start, and there was pain rather than pleasure in her eyes.

"Do forgive me!" I pleaded. "I had to finish what I couldn't say last night. I wouldn't intrude by travelling in your train from New York without permission, but I thought if I came to Jamaica, maybe you'd grant me a few minutes. Won't you let me atone—won't you let me help? I feel that I can. Roger has hinted of trouble. If you would trust me, I'd put my whole soul into the fight to save you from it."

So I ran on, with a torrent of arguments and all the force of love behind them. Something of that force the girl must have felt, for slowly she yielded and told me this strange story.

Roger Odell's father—Roger senior—had fallen in love with a girl who afterwards became Maida's mother. He was a widower, and young Roger was a boy of eight or nine at the time. Old Roger—he was not old then—had acted as the girl's guardian, and she had promised to marry him, when suddenly she disappeared, leaving behind a letter saying that she was going with the only man she could ever love.

Five years passed, and then one day she came back bringing a little daughter four years old. Both the Rogers were away when she called at the house in Fifth Avenue; one at his office, the other at school. A housekeeper received the pair, realising that the mother was desperately ill. She would say nothing of herself, except that they had come from England; could not even tell her married name. She had lived through the voyage, she said, to put her daughter under the protection of her only friend. Some strange luggage she had brought, on which were London labels. She forbade the servant to telephone the master of the house. She would write a letter, and then she would go. The letter was begun, but before it could be finished the writer fell into unconsciousness. For a few days she lingered, but never spoke again, and died in the arms of the man she had jilted.

"If you ever loved me, keep my child as if she were your own," began the written appeal. "She is Madeleine, named after me. Don't try to find out her other name. Give her yours, which might have been mine. Make no inquiries. If you do, the same fate may fall on her which has fallen on her father and others of his family. It is killing me now. Save my little Maida. The one legacy I can leave her is a jewel which I want her to keep; a miniature of myself taken for someone I loved, and an Egyptian relic which, for a reason I don't know, is immensely important. I promised her father that this child should never part with it. The one reward I can offer you is my grat——"

There the letter broke off.

Roger Odell, Senior, had obeyed every one of his dead love's requests. The "Egyptian relic" was a mummy case, with the human contents marvellously preserved; the jewel, an opal and crystal eye of Horus. In taking out the miniature from its frame, to be copied in a large portrait, Maida found the miniature of a man she supposed to be her father, and had ordered that enlarged also, to hang in her shrine. Her memories of the past before coming to America were vague; but her childhood, happy as it had been in other ways, was cursed by the dream of a terrible, dark face—a face appearing as a mere brown spot in the distance, then growing large as it drew nearer, coming close to her eyes at last in giant size, shutting out all the rest of the world. Whether she had ever seen this face in reality, before it obsessed her dreams, she could not be sure; but the impression was that she had. As she grew older, the dream came less frequently; but once or twice she had seen a face in a crowd which reminded her—perhaps morbidly—of the dream. Such a face had looked up from the audience last night.

This mystery was one of two which had clouded Maida's life. From the second had come her great trouble; and she did not see that between the two could exist any connection. When I heard the rest of the history, however, I differed from her. Some link there might be, I thought; and if I were to help, it must be my business to find it.

One day, on leaving school for the holidays, when she was seventeen, Maida, and a woman servant sent to fetch her from Milbrook to New York, had met with a slight railway accident, much like that of to-day. It was this coincidence, maybe, which inclined her to confide in me, for she had been thinking of it, she said, when I came. A young man had been "kind" to Miss Odell and her maid; had brought them water and food. Later he had introduced himself. He was Lieutenant Granville, of the Navy. Also he was an inventor, who believed he could make a fortune for himself and his mother, if he could patent and get taken up by some great firm an idea of his, in which he had vainly tried to interest the heads of the Navy. This concerned a secret means of throwing a powerful light under water, for the protection of warships or others threatened by submerged submarines. Granville believed that experiments would demonstrate immense usefulness for his invention and so interested was Maida that she tried to induce Roger to finance it. He refused, and did not like Granville when the girl brought them together.