III. One of Dora’s Failures
Is it usual to record one’s failures? I believe not. And yet many of them are perforce as interesting to the public as one’s most brilliant successes.
Here is a case in point.
A young lady, whom we will call Ada Calmour, had had the misfortune to displease her wealthy father to so great an extent that he vowed never to forgive her. Her crime was a common one. She loved a handsome young fellow who was impulsive, unlucky, poor, and a cousin to boot, and steadfastly declined to give him up when ordered to do so by her father, from whom, by-the-by, she inherited the self-will which roused his ire.
Just about this time Mr Calmour fell under the spell of a lady whom his daughter did not hesitate to dub an adventuress of the most pronounced type, and it became evident to his friends that he was sickening for matrimony.
The ordinary judge of humanity would have imagined that Mr Calmour’s own infatuation would have made him more tolerant of his daughter’s love affair. But, to the tell the truth, he was perversity personified, and as his appreciation of Miss Reede’s insidious advances increased, so did his depreciation of his nephew’s qualities progress in inverse ratio.
At last matters reached a crisis. The adventuress’s intrigues progressed successfully, and Miss Reede succeeded in transforming her impecunious self into the wife of a wealthy country magnate. She had evidently entered upon her new sphere of life with fixed ideas as to the fitness of things, for she had no sooner returned from her short honeymoon that she began to turn the house upside down, and coolly informed her step-daughter that she must vacate the bedroom she had always occupied, as it was to be transformed into a boudoir for the new mistress of the establishment. As there were at least two other rooms in the rambling old house that would have suited Mrs Calmour’s purpose equally well, Ada recognised in the new arrangement a deliberate intention to insult her, and suspected that the ulterior motive was to drive her from the house.
A girl of meek and yielding spirit would have submitted to the indignity without audible complaint. Miss Calmour was too high-spirited for that, and declined to yield her treasured privileges without a struggle. Her father had always petted and indulged her until these unfortunate love differences arose. He had, in her opinion, shown strong signs of mental aberration in marrying a woman of whose antecedents he knew nothing beyond the fact that she owed money in all directions before she secured him for her husband, and that her very close intimacy with a man whom she represented to be her guardian provoked invidious comments.
Ada was therefore not greatly surprised when her father declined to put a veto upon Mrs Calmour’s appropriation of her pet sanctum.
“I can’t see that there is anything worth making a fuss about,” he observed, carelessly. “If the room is wanted, you can easily find another that will be just as comfortable.”
In fact, he dismissed the matter as too trivial to worry about. The mischief lay deeper than he either knew or cared, and one encroachment followed another until the daughter of the house decided that her room was preferable to her company. The immediate result of this conviction was action on her part. She quitted the home she idolised, and it was surmised by her father and his wife that she had eloped with Pearce Churchill. Mrs Calmour did her best to encourage this supposition, and to fan the already unreasonable anger of the man whose money she coveted for herself.
Her schemes prospered to perfection. Mr Calmour swore never to look upon his daughter again, or to allow her to touch a farthing of his money.
“Her good-for-nothing husband may keep her,” he observed, callously. “She didn’t know when she was well off, and as she has chosen to make her own bed, she may lie upon it.”
But the poor girl had not married her cousin after all, although he was eager that she should become his wife, even though the fortune she once expected to inherit was probably alienated from her for ever. When Ada discovered that her lover’s income was totally inadequate for even one, she declined to add to his responsibilities, and went into the world to earn her own living.
“And you must not write to me for twelve months,” she said firmly but tearfully. “I love you dearly, Pearce; but you shall not sacrifice yourself to a penniless wife until time and absence have tested your affection. You need not fear for me. I shall get on well enough. And in twelve months I will write to you, and will gladly marry you if you still want me.”
All Pearce Churchill’s arguments in favour of an immediate marriage were in vain, and when Mr Calmour died quite suddenly, three months after his daughter’s disappearance, none knew where to find her. Probably the misguided man had been visited by compunctious qualms of conscience concerning his treatment of his own child, for his will, as read at the funeral, savoured of a half-hearted attempt to saddle Fate with the responsibility of deciding whether his wife or his daughter should inherit his wealth. Said will was fantastic to a ridiculous degree, and provoked the indignation of all the old friends of the family, who estimated Mrs Calmour at her true value, and set her down as the unscrupulous, scheming adventuress she really was.
Some even went so far as to hint that Mr Calmour, who was in the prime of life, and had always been a healthy man, would have been alive still, if he had been further removed from his wife’s influence. But hints and suspicions are more easily indulged in than open accusations, and many a tragedy remains unexposed because nobody likes to be the initiative accuser.
Thus, though many black glances were levelled at the newly made widow, she was allowed to pursue the even tenor of her way unmolested, in spite of the fact that her badly disguised rage at the gist of her husband’s will increased the distrust with which she was already regarded.
Mr Calmour had been enlightened as to the true state of affairs with regard to his daughter, at least as far as his nephew could enlighten him, and had become aware that she was struggling unaided to earn a livelihood which he could have given her without missing the money.
“I am very anxious about Ada,” Pearce had written. “I have written to the last address I had, and my letters have been returned, marked ‘Not known.’ I have now got a good appointment, and could I but find her Ada would marry me at once. She only refused me before because she was afraid of making me still poorer than I was. She is a noble girl, and has been shamefully treated. On your head be it, if she has come to grief in her fight with adversity. I wonder what my aunt, whom you used to pretend to love, would think if she could know that within two years of her death you have practically turned her only child into the streets, to make room for a professional adventuress, whom no one but you would have married?”
Pearce Churchill knew that his letter would enrage his uncle. But he also hoped that it might have a salutary effect. The will which he heard read convinced him that his hope had not been quite in vain.
Mr Calmour left all his property, subject to an annuity of one hundred per annum for his wife, to his nephew Pearce Churchill, on condition that he was married to Ada within three months of the testator’s death. Should this marriage not take place within the stipulated period, Ada and Pearce were to have one hundred per annum each, and everything else was to go to his wife absolutely, no less than five thousand a year being involved altogether.
The stake was so big, and it seemed so monstrous that this hated interloper should succeed to the estates that had been in the Calmour family over three hundred years, that every effort was made to baffle her.
We were speedily commissioned to discover Ada Calmour and put forth all our energies to the task. Indeed, we had been offered such a large sum in the event of success, that we engaged a colleague for me, in the person of a woman of thirty or thereabouts, who came to us with very good credentials. One of these we verified. The other reference had just started on a Continental tour when Mr White wrote to him, and was uncomeatable. But Mrs Deane was engaged, and proved herself so exceedingly smart that our firm soon congratulated itself on having secured her services.
Just at this time the Calmour case was engrossing the greater part of my attention. We had advertised very freely, but our advertisements met with no response, and as one week after another passed, and all our plans for discovering Miss Calmour failed, we grew very anxious about the matter.
The case was so exasperatingly disappointing, too. Several times we believed ourselves to be on the eve of discovery, and each time our expected triumph turned out to be a will-o’-the-wisp. Twice I journeyed to a distant town, feeling confident of meeting Miss Calmour. Each time she had disappeared and left no trace behind her, or at least so little that it was difficult to work upon. Three times Mrs Deane set off on a similar errand, and three times she returned with failure written on her face.
At last the fateful day of limitation came and went. Wherever she might be now, Ada’s inheritance was lost to her, and the adventuress was triumphant possessor of the coveted acres and personalty.
At the end of twelve months’ probation she had given herself, Miss Calmour returned, and then we managed to understand the cause of our failure. She had been engaged as travelling companion by some people who turned out to have been in the pay of Mrs Calmour, and who, oddly enough, were the people who had been given as reference by Mrs Deane. All newspapers were tabooed by Miss Calmour’s employers, a Mr and Mrs Carlile, and she neither knew of her father’s death or of our advertisements. The Carliles were very erratic travellers, and it subsequently transpired that their hurried departures had been co-incidental with the futile journeys of myself or my lady colleague.
They had, in fact, been warned of our intended arrival, and had always managed to carry their unsuspecting companion away in time to avoid discovery.
Miss Calmour bitterly regretted having insisted upon twelve months’ probation, for although she was soon very happily married to her cousin, and although his earnings and their joint little incomes brought in a total of six hundred a year, this was very far short of what would have been theirs had they inherited under Mr Calmour’s stupid and eccentric will.
They did not doubt that Mrs Calmour learnt somehow that we were employed to trace the heiress, and had counter-schemed to prevent the discovery we were so anxious to make.
A few months after this painful failure of ours, I was in the neighbourhood of Calmour Grange, and saw the lady of the house driven past me in great style. I was naturally curious as to her personality, and am not sure that I was quite as surprised as I might have been at the discovery I made.
I knew now that success would have been will nigh impossible for me.
Mrs Calmour was no other than Mrs Deane, the clever lady detective who stayed in our employment three months, and to whom we confided all the details about the great will case.
I have another story to relate about her.