The Matchmaker

Front matter

PRINTED FROM AMERICAN PLATES AT THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. BY L. B. WALFORD AUTHOR OF "MR. SMITH,' ' THE BABY'S GRANDMOTHER," "THE MISCHIEF OF MONICA," ETC, ETC NEW EDITION LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET CONTENTS. Chapter Page I. Penelope i II. An Episode 12 III. Arriving at Sunset ig IV. Lady Carnoustie diagnoses Penelope 29 V. Master and Mistress 35 VI. Penelope wins Favour 44 VII. Mina vindicates Herself 54 VIII Up the Burnside 64 IX A Jilt 73 X Lord Carnoustie at Play 81 XI. Penelope beamed upon Him 90 XII. Fear 99 XIII. 'Setting out for the Kirk' 107 XIV. Lord Carnoustie's Show Man 115 XV. An Explanation under an Umbrella 120 XVI. An Important Invalid . 128 XVII. Lord Carnoustie and his Factor 137 XVIII 'You want to poach upon my Preserve' 145 XIX Mina's Loss upon the Moor 154 XX. 'Won't you have a Nice Bright Sixpence, Tosh ?' . 164 XXI.

Lady Carnoustie's Dilemma 172 XXII Penelope is left alone to gather Driftwood . . 182 XXIII ' Let Every Herring hang by its ain Tail! ' ... 191 XXIV. ' A Pink Gingham Frock ' 202 XXV. ' How if it were Love?' 209 XXVI ' Whathappened here,' she said, ' Last Night?' . . CONTENTS. IV Page Chapter XXVII A Wrestle for the Mastery 224 XXVIII. 'What signifies a Lie, more or less?' ••■233 XXIX. Torquil Macalister takes the Hint 241 XXX. A Hand on a Dog's Head 25° XXXI Tosh brings a Piece of Information 259 XXXII. ■ A Week is a Confoundedly Long Time' ... 271 XXXIII. Fashionable Arrivals 277 XXXIV. 'Can Bob ? ' 2S6 XXXV ' I've known a Lassie marry for a Peat-Stack ' 295 XXXVI Did you notice Mr. Redwood's Face?' ... 304 XXXVII An Accident -a propos ' 3'4 XXXVIII Bob, by Himself 324 XXXIX Don't you ever Spoon ?' 33' XL Miss Marianne Soutter plays Cribbage at last 342 XLI.

Her Dear Little Singing Man 352 XLII He kicked the French Novel off the Sofa ' . 360 XLI 1 1 Tosh loses a Letter 36S XL1V The Postmark was : Lochaber' 377 XLV • They will find Torquil Macalister there To-morrow ' 389 XLVI A Terrible Meeting Place 398 XLVII L'Honneur du Nom 408 XLVIII. Conclusion

Chapter I. Penelope

Flowers have a time before they come to seed, And she is young and now must sport the while. — Daniel. ' I shall go to the Carnousties',' said Penelope, promptly. Penelope had a clear, sweet voice, with a ring of decision in it. The voice to which she now replied was neither so clear nor so sweet, but the decision was inherited. Mr. East had been explaining to his daughter, at some length, certain circumstances as to which his mind was made up ; and her response, which was, as we have seen, brief, indicated not the less surely a lucid perception of her own will. The father and daughter were breakfasting together, and no one else was present. There seldom was any one else present at this early meal. 'You will go to the Carnousties', eh?' said Mr. East, putting down his coffee cup. ' 'Pon my word — yes — that is an excellent idea.

The very place for you. They will be glad to have you, I suppose?' ' They have asked me, you know, papa, often — that is, once. I mean last year. But I think — oh, yes, I am sure — they would be glad to have me. Anyhow, I shall write, and offer.' ' It would be the very place for you,' repeated her father, with evident satisfaction. ' Respectable quarters — respectable people. Relations, too. I wonder how I did not think of them before. You would be happy enough with the girls.' i ' Girls ! ' Penelope gave a little laugh. 'Eh?' said Mr. East, lifting his eyebrows. 'Well, aren't there girls ? ' ' The youngest " girl " is five-and-twenty, the eldest five-andthirty,' replied Penelope, succinctly. ' By Jove ! Are they really ? And why the deuce are they not married, then? But, all the same, I don't see why they should not be companions for you.

I'll bet you know as much as they do, living on and on in that queer, out-of-the world place, and in their queer old-fashioned style. I have not been to Carnoustie Castle for some time, but when I was there last, not one jot or tittle of difference could I perceive between its ways then, and what they had been a dozen years before — or for that matter, ever since I could remember. Gad, it was curious ! ' And the man of the world, who studiously accommodated his mind, manners, habits, and customs to the march of time, and kept even step with every modern circumstance, leaned back in his chair and laughed. ' Yes, I shall go to the Carnousties',' repeated Penelope, as though she had not been listening. ' It is a good opportunity. I have often wished to go. And as I shall have to be somewhere if you are to be away till Christmas, it would be the best "where " I know.' ' Precisely.

A good billet in every way. Dull as ditchwater, but the essence of respectability. Old Scotch baron — old castle — old family coach, and all that sort of thing. Poor and proud. If they would let me pay for you — but I suppose it would not do to offer, eh? What do you think? No, I suppose it would hardly do to suggest it.' ' Papa ! ' ' Humph ! " Papa." Many families would jump at a family arrangement of the kind. I have to go off to the West Indies — can't take my daughter — am obliged to throw her on the hos pitality of relations — don't wish her to be a burden — eh? Could it not be done somehow? ' ' They would simply be insulted They are not so very poor, either.' PENELOPE. 3 ' Oh dear, no ; comfortable enough, I dare say. Only your landed proprietors, what with all the repairing and tinkering to be done up and down their estates — what with the constant drain going on — can seldom be flush of ready money in these times, I should imagine.

Probably Carnoustie does not net a third of his nominal rent roll. He has a big house to keep up — and a title. A title is a dear luxury, especially in Scotland. Still, I dare say you are in the right, and that it would hardly do to offer any compensation. I can send presents when I return.' ' You mean to return at Christmas?' ' A little before Christmas ; but it is impossible to say to a week.' ' And this is May,' said Penelope, musing. ' I should have June, July, August, September, October, November, and part of December to get through. It is along time.' ' A deuced long time ; but I don't see how to shorten it.' ' It would not do for me to be going about paying visits,' reflected Penelope. ' I am not the regulation visiting-out young lady, and I should detest the life. But, all the same, six months and a half of a lonely country house in the west of Scotland ' — then suddenly the sunlight burst forth all over her face. ' Papa, I think it would be glorious ! ' she cried. ' It would be a nee world.

I should leave behind me everything I have learned hitherto, for weal or for woe. I should burn my boats when I set foot upon that island shore. For six months and a half I should be a Carnoustie among Carnousties ; and if, at the end of it, you should return from your voyage a wiser and a better — or, at any rate, a richer — man, you would find that I, too, had not been idle, but had laid in a large store of that valuable commodity, experience.' Within the hour she had despatched a missive to Carnoustie Castle. Great was the surprise and excitement it created there. Lord Carnoustie, who had followed the letter-bag in, and was unlac ing his boots in the drawing-room after a long wet walk — a practice against which his wife's remonstrances had only prevailed so far as to cause him to perform the operation behind her chair — was startled in the midst of it by the flutter of the women, all pressing round to hear, and exclaim. 'What is it — what is it?' demanded he testily; for partly by reason of his stooping posture, partly of his being naturally what the Scotch call ' dull of hearing,' he could not catch the gist of the matter. 'What are ye saying?

Who's coming? Who's offered a visit ? Penelope ? Who's Penelope ? Can't ye speak plain?' irritably snapping as he spoke the well-worn leather boot-lace, which he had been aware beforehand was far through, but had thought by careful handling might last another time. The outcry around provoked him the more, as he felt to it was due the jerk which had severed the weak part of the lace. ' Provoking ! ' he muttered to himself, putting the bit in his pocket. He durst not complain aloud, or Lady Carnoustie would have seen what he was about, and Lady Carnoustie was now happily engaged with her letter. But he cast glances at the boot with its broken end from time to time, while she read and commented ; and it worried him more to conjecture whether he had another lace of the kind in his drawer or not, than to consider whether a young unknown relation would be a welcome inmate of his household for a prolonged period of time, or whether she would not be somewhat in the way.

Had she been a man he would have cared much more ; in fact he would not have had her at any price. He hated men guests. Had she been an older woman, he would have rubbed his chin, blinked his eyes, and ejaculated, ' Pish ! ' and ' Pshaw ! ' and ' Dear me ! What a nuisance ! ' — for he was an elder of the Kirk and never made use of stronger language — but when he understood that the Penelope whose calm little note had raised such a storm was the daughter of his cousin, Henrv East, and that she was only twenty years of age, he merely said, 'Oh,' and after a minute's pause proceeded to pick out the leathern knot of boot number two. Meantime the three Miss Carnousties had all left their chairs and were, as we have said, eagerly pressing round their mother! PENELOPE. 5 'For how long? For six months?' exclaimed Louisa, the eldest. ' She would be here all the summer and the autumn, then.

She would help us with our summer visitors. Mamma, may I see the letter?' ' And me after you,' petitioned Joanna, who was next of age, covetously watching the document transferred. ' What a large hand ! I dare say Penelope draws. If she does, we might go sketching together. I must tell her to be sure to bring her colour box, and plenty of Whatman's paper.' ' I wonder if she is fond of poetry ? ' murmured the third and youngest sister, the fair dreamy-eyed Wilhelmina, who, recognising the prior claims of the other two as regarded the all-important despatch, was patient and speculative. ' I wonder who are her favourites? ' — looking round with a smile. Several smiled back : it was so like little Mina, they felt, to be thinking of such matters as poetry and ' favourites.' Presently Mina walked to the window ; and her back being turned to those within, a curious observer from without might have been struck by the sudden change the young lady's countenance underwent.

It was no longer placid, gentle, sweet ; it was working strangely. ' I suppose I must say we shall be very glad to have her,' said Lady Carnoustie, turning her head in the direction of her husband, but still not perceiving him, hidden as he was behind the huge back of her chair. ' I do wish, my dear, you would not sit behind me. It is so uncomfortable that way you have of taking up your position away from us all. Pray come nearer, and let us see you.' 'I'm here — I'm here,' replied her husband, scraping his chair an inch or two forward. ' What d'ye want to see me for? I'm beside you. But I'm wet and ' ' And dirty.' Lady Carnoustie supplied the proper adjective by intuition. ' I don't think you ought to get wet through at your age,' she added. ' And really you might go upstairs to change, before coming into the drawing-room.' ' Hoots !

Nonsense ! I came in because I saw old Posty at the door, and I wanted my letters. Were there none for me? None?' ' None for any of us, except this from Penelope. Of course, I must say we shall be very glad to have her, and she had better come by train to Glasgow, and catch the boat from there ? Or should she catch the boat from Ardrossan ? That would shorten the passage ' — Lady Carnoustie had a horror of steamboat travelling — ' but the Ardrossan boats are not so good,' she meditated ; ' and, after all, it is not open sea between Glasgow and Ardrossan ' ' Considering that it is the Clyde as far as Greenock, at any rate,' remarked Lord Carnoustie, almost forgetting his broken boot-lace in the sardonic satisfaction of tripping up a wife who generally had the best of it, ' I should say she might be able to endure it.

As for open sea? There may be a bit of a jumble between us and the main, when the tide is running strong — but as the crossing would be after Ardrossan, not before it ' ' Let her come from Glasgow then ; that would be the more direct route. Let her take the train from London to Glasgow, and the steamboat from Glasgow here,' and her ladyship looked round for applause, feeling that she had shown her powers of organisation, as well as her knowledge of geography. No one, however, took the hint ; her daughters were still engaged with the letter, and her husband with his boot holes. Such indifference was exasperating. It was a peculiarity of Lady Carnoustie's that she could change her mood in the twinkling of an eye, and smile and frown in a breath. She was not an ill-natured woman ; she was not chronically peevish and hard to please, but she had a temper which flew round like a weathercock, and no one ever knew where to catch it.

This might have been a serious matter in many a household ; at Carnoustie, ' dear mamma' was understood, and no harm was done. Mamma was now irate. ' It seems to me that everybody has more right to Penelope's letter than I have,' she observed tartly, ' and really, considering it was written to me, I might be supposed to wish to see it for myself. I had scarcely glanced at it ' PENELOPE. 7 The sheet was put into her hand. ' Not until everyone of you has read it.' Still smarting from the lack of previous attention. ' You have such a way among you girls of pouncing upon everything that comes to the house and usurping it — and — and — really I never know what is my own, and what is not. As for this letter from Penelope, I — upon my word, I — it is quite new to me ; I had not taken it in at all ! ' ' I am sorry, mamma ; I did not understand you had not done with it.' It was Louisa who spoke.

Louisa always spoke dutifully. ' We ought to remember that dear mamma is not strong,' she was wont to observe; 'we ought never to answer dear mamma when she is vexed with us.' ' My dear ! " Done with it?" Why I had only just glanced at it ! Literally I had barely caught the drift of Penelope's meaning, when you seized it out of my hand.' ' Pray excuse me.' Louisa looked distressed. ' I really did not understand.' ' Well, my dear ; — well. Say no more. Only do try not to do it again.' Lady Carnoustie's brow cleared. All was once more serene, and Penelope could be chattily discussed, as indeed she was, morning, noon, and night, for many succeeding days. The above may serve as a sample of family life at the old Scottish castle to which my heroine, Penelope East, was about to repair. A few more words about its inmates, ere we proceed with our story.

Lord Carnoustie was a dry, plodding, thick-headed yokel, who, if he had not been born a peer, would have made a very respec table ploughman. Wherever in life he had been set down, there would he have taken root. As his social groove had been fixed for him, he jogged along in it easily enough. As he had grown up to certain usages and customs, they suited him. He knew how to value a farm, and how to speak to the farmer. He could present a minister to the parish, and fancied himself a judge of the minister's sermons. He was popular — as such a landlord was sure to be popular among his tenantry ; and the sight of his homely form, home- THE MA TCHMAKER. spun clad, surmounted by a battered hat which would have dis graced a scarecrow, was always a welcome one, be it met where it would. When accosted, he would respond readily and familiarly, touching his hat to the hat touched to him ; and if his interlo cutor chanced to be an aged or privileged person, frequently adopting for the moment the broad Scottish vernacular.

Ordinarily he talked a certain fine old dialect which in these later times is hardly to be found among the fast withering representatives of former generations. It was Scotch — broad Scotch, but it was not provincial Scotch. It was quaintly set off with subtle phrases and epithets, frequently of French extraction — for such still linger in many parts of North Britain, relics of a past when fair and beauteous France and ' Caledonia, stern and wild,' were closely knit by various bonds — and it was accentuated in a fashion of its own. But it was not vulgar ; it was not coarse ; it was not repugnant to the most fastidious ear. Neither was Lord Carnoustie himself a person to be alto gether despised. He had not, it is true, any remarkable mental or physical endowments ; but he acted sturdily up to his own views of right and wrong ; he lived among his people ; knew their lives ; with his own ear hearkened to their petitions, and with his own hand supplied their wants.

Moreover, wet or fine, winter or summer, the grizzled whis kers of the tough old lord were to be seen over the ledge of his own ' loft ' in the parish church on a Sunday morning ; and every shepherd on his farms, and every fisherman in the cot tages along the shore, knew that no empty place ever escaped the small ferreting eyes which peered to right and to left, and raked the building through and through before the bell ceased ringing. Lord Carnoustie was always in his seat a full ten minutes before the minister ascended the pulpit, and he did not consider that period of time wasted. At home, however, there was another master, and my lord was only vassal in chief. It is not easy to describe such a personage as Lady Carnoustie. One can hardly say what she was. She was not one kind of PENELOPE. 9 woman, she was not another — sometimes it seemed as though nothing were left for her to be.

Perhaps the real key to her character lay in the fact that her health was uncertain, and she had for long permitted herself to be what her health dictated. Thus she would be by swift transition, querulous, arbitrary, unjust ; or affectionate, yielding, and colloquial : all in the turn of half an hour. One minute would find her very positive, and highly indignant that her word could be doubted ; the next she would ruefully confess that she had not meant to go so far. When in good humour she had a trick of smoothing and stroking the strings of her cap — for being old-fashioned she still wore a cap, and it had strings ; when perturbed, the state of her mind would be discernible by the twitching hither and thither of the ribbons beneath her chin. But whether genial or fretful, cross or smiling, Lady Car noustie was dutifully ministered to by her daughters, and smartly served by the household.

Long usage had enabled one and all to take her mental tem perature with half an eye, ere any request was made, or any fact announced ; and in particular the two elder ' young ladies,' as Louisa and Joanna were still invariably termed in the house, were perfectly satisfied that everything their mother said or did was for the best. They had grown up in an atmosphere impregnated with this idea. Louisa was by nature a docile creature As we know, she was no longer in her first, nor even in her second youth. The insouciance of the teens had given place to the full-formed virtues of maturity, and these again betrayed the faint dawnings of mellowness. Yet so peacefully had each decade passed, that it had scarce left its trace on her outward appearance. Her figure was still well proportioned in its outlines, if it had lost something of the plumpness of youth ; her skin was as fair and soft, if a shade less delicately tinted, than it once had been ; her hair, dressed somewhat more carefully, scarcely showed that it was a trifle less luxuriant.

Neither had the mind altered. At fifteen Louisa had been a musician, a songstress, a collector of manuscript ditties and a voluminous transcriber thereof; at five-and-thirty she collected, sang, and transcribed as ardently as ever. Daily she practised scales and exercises at the accustomed hour ; and the arrival of a fresh sonatina was still the interest it had ever been. Louisa did not read the newspapers through. She read the leading articles and the ' Court Circular,' but explained that her dear parents did not think indiscriminate newspaper-reading fit for girls. There were many things in the newspapers which one might come upon before one knew, if one were in the habit of reading promiscuously. Indeed dear mamma thought most of the literature of the day very pernicious, and discouraged its being brought to Carnoustie.

Joanna and she were, however, permitted to read Blackwood, should that magazine come in their way. When Lady Carnoustie drove round to call at one or other of the three houses which comprised the neighbourhood, Louisa had the seat beside her mother. It was considered that as the eldest daughter of the family this was her rightful place ; but she never exceeded her privileges ; she neither took charge of the card-case nor issued directions to the footman. That, Lady Carnoustie would have stigmatised as ' usurping,' and Lady Carnoustie, ill or well, kept guard against ' usurping ' in all its branches. Joanna, the next sister, may be more briefly dealt with. She was Louisa with variations. In appearance they were alike, and they dressed alike in every particular. Each had a pet bird, but Louisa's was a canary, Joanna's a bullfinch.

In lieu of playing and singing, Joanna drew and sketched. If Louisa did not care to make calls, Joanna occupied the vacant seat. Both worked for the poor, and taught in the school, and trimmed the flower glasses, and refrained from promiscuous reading of the newspaper, and adhered to dear mamma's judgment in everything. And they ought not to have been ridiculed for it, but they were. It was not their fault that they were made to limp through PENELOPE. 11 life in swaddling-clothes, tied and bound at every turn. No one had ever undone the bandages ; how were the poor babes to undo them for themselves ? They were but great pathetic infants, knowing nothing and caring to know nothing of life and its problems ; the walls of a nunnery could not have more solemnly shut out the realities of existence than did the great gates of Carnoustie Castle.

And what about Mina — dear little Mina — Mina, who gave less trouble than anyone, who hardly ever needed to be spoken to or rebuked, and who was the meekest of lambkins be neath supervision and prohibition ? Mina never ' usurped ' nor ' pounced upon ' her mother's prerogatives ; Mina was the simplest, sweetest child — so easily guided, so willingly led. Even Joanna had once been ruffled in spirit, and had gone about for a whole day muttering to herself because her mother had declined to discuss with her theology. Joanna had borrowed a book of sermons, which had turned out, to Lady Carnoustie's horror, to be ' broad ' — ' shockingly broad,' according to her lady ship's views — and incensed at having been thus outwitted by a pious volume which she had thought might safely be perused without her intervention, she had vented her irritation somewhat unreasonably on the head of Joanna.

Joanna, as we say, had grumbled under her breath, and terrible expletives in the shape of ' Thirty-three years old ! ' and ' No longer a school-girl ! ' had been heard to escape her. It had been a sad experience, Lady Carnoustie said after wards ; and she hoped that Mina might never hear about it. There were many things that Mina was never supposed to hear about. It was quite customary for Louisa and Joanna to pull their chairs close to their mother's sofa, and broach subjects which were dropped when Mina came into the room. Lady Carnoustie liked them to do this. She would have told you that she and her two dear elder girls had everything in common ; that they agreed with her in all she did, and that by-and-by little Mina would be admitted to a like intimacy. But the dear girls themselves knew that at any moment mamma was liable to turn upon them, and had they not been the perfectly plastic creatures they were they might not have been so happy in the sofa corner.

As it was, they considered them selves privileged. Their mother talked to them as she did not do to Mina — that was enough. And how about Mina's looks ? At Carnoustie she was considered very beautiful indeed, and very fascinating. In other places she was spoken of as ' the pretty Miss Carnoustie,' and ' the pretty Miss Carnoustie ' she had been for a good many years, while still regarded as the baby of the family by her own people. Mina never seemed to know anything or to do anything amiss. Her blue limpid eyes were dreamy with poetic musings ; for she was known to be a lover of poetry, and absorber of odes and invocations. Her gentle movements never brought her to grief, never ran her into mischief. She clashed with no one's prejudices, ran counter to no one's opinions. If she put out her hand to take anything for herself, she did it so softly that the motion was almost unperceived.

In consequence, it was the household creed that Mina was a tender floweret on whom no rough wind was ever to blow, and whose bloom was to be jealously guarded from contact with every sort of untoward circumstance.

Chapter II. An Episode

Sigh for the hapless hour That knit two hearts in one And only gave Love power To die when 'twas begun Some years before the time at which our story opens, there had occurred a trifling episode in the life of Mina Carnoustie. She had had a very, very little love affair. AN EPISODE. 13 In almost any other household it would hardly have been dignified by such a name at all, but at Carnoustie Castle it was talked of with bated breath for months afterwards, and even in its decadence it was found to have still a flavour of its own in the annals of the household. This is its outline, briefly sketched. It was the custom of Lord and Lady Carnoustie to sally forth at long intervals and pay a stately family visit at the mansion of some noble relation or friend. It would be no mean house which was thus distinguished.

When invited, their three daughters would accompany them, also suitable attendants , special conveyances would be ordered, the august path made smooth — in short, the whole thing would be done in style. Prepara tions on an adequate scale would have been previously made in every department, and dress would be considered of consequence. On such occasions Lady Carnoustie was clingingly dependent on her own party, and prouder of them and more affectionate towards them than when at home. It gratified her more than she would have allowed to anyone to have Mina admired. Accordingly when, once upon a time, a certain polite young gentleman and fellow guest at the house of a county magnate appeared to be flatteringly anxious to listen to every word Miss Mina said, and to make his own words agreeable to her in return, Mina's lady-mother was, in her own way, complacent.