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.