The Toll-Gate (12 page)

"Pray spare me a recital of Mr. Coate's remarks!" she interrupted. "If my odd ways have given him a distaste for me, I can only say that I am heartily glad of it!"

"There you go!" he exclaimed bitterly. "I should have supposed you might have taken pains to be civil to a guest, but no! You behave——"

"Let me remind you, Henry, that Mr. Coate is a guest in this house neither by my wish nor my invitation!"

"Well, he's here by mine, and if you weren't such an unaccountable girl you'd be glad of it! Handsome fellow, ain't he? Slap up to the mark, too, as you'd say yourself!"

"I should never describe Mr. Coate in such terms."

"Oh, don't put on those missish airs with me, Nell! Lord knows I've heard you using all sorts of sporting lingo!"

"Certainly! I trust, however, that I am in general veracious!" she retorted.

"I'm not surprised that fine aunt of yours couldn't nabble a husband for you!" he said, nettled. "You've a damned nasty tongue in your head! I can tell you this, a Long Meg like you can't afford to put up the backs of people as you do!"

"That is the second thing you have been so obliging as to tell me, and no more interesting to me than the first. Have you anything more to say?"

"Yes, I have! I wish you will accord Nat a little common civility! It's no very pleasant thing for me to have my cousin behaving like a shrew! One would have thought you would have been pleased with the very flattering distinction he accords you! I don't know what you think is to become of you when the old man slips his wind! You needn't look to me to provide for you, for if he has more to leave than the title and an estate mortgaged to the hilt——"

"Are you having the effrontery to suggest that I—I, Nell Stornaway!—should encourage the advances of Coate?" she demanded. "Perhaps you think he would make a suitable match for me?"

"Oh, well!" he muttered, his eyes shifting from hers. "You might do worse, and you're not likely to do better. I don't say—I never spoke of marriage, after all! All I care for is that you should make his visit agreeable. You don't give a fig for the awkwardness of my position! If you open your mouth at the dinner-table, ten to one it is only to say something cutting to Nat——"

"Yes, indeed! You would fancy that he must be sensible by now, would you not, that his presence at Kellands is only less distasteful to me than the extremely improper style of his advances? But, no!"

"A woman of address would know how to turn it off without flying into a miff!"

"Yes, and some women, no doubt, are more fortunate than I in those male relatives whose duty it might be thought to guard them from such unwanted attentions!"

He coloured, and shot her a resentful glance. "What a piece of work you make about a trifle! I suppose you expect Nat to toad-eat you, though how you should when you wear a gown with a darn in it—the shabbiest thing! puts me to the blush, I can tell you!—and serve such plain dinners—only one course, and that ill-dressed! And then, to crown all, go off afterwards, and never come into the drawing-room, as you should! No tea-tray brought in: nothing as it should be!—'pon my soul, I don't know why you should look to be treated with any extraordinary civility!"

"Good gracious, does Mr. Coate desire tea in the evening?" she exclaimed. "I thought it was the brandy he wanted! I will not fail to tell Huby that between us we have quite mistaken the matter; and a tray shall be brought to you. My presence, however, you must dispense with: I sit every evening with my grandfather."

"Yes! If Nat had the good fortune to please you, you wouldn't choose to spend your time with an old dotard who's had his notice to quit!"

She took a swift step towards him. He shrank back instinctively, but not quickly enough to escape a swinging box on the ear, which made him stagger. "You will speak of my grandfather with respect in this house, Henry! Understand that!"

A burst of hearty laughter, coming from the direction of the front door, made her turn, at once startled and mortified. Nathaniel Coate stood upon the threshold, laughing, and waving his hat like a huntsman capping hounds to a scent. "Bravo, bravo! That was a wisty one, by God! It's bellows to mend with you, Henry: she'll give you pepper, by God, she will!" He tossed his hat and his whip on to a chair, and came forward, saying: "What have you been about, you stupid fellow? Why don't you take that Friday-face of yours away before Miss Nell slaps it again?"

Henry, taking this broad hint, retired again into the library, shutting the door behind him with a vicious slam, which made his friend give another of his loud laughs, and say: "Silly ninny-hammer! Now we shall have him in the sullens! Ah, don't be in a hurry to slip off, Miss Nell! Damme if this ain't the first time I've laid eyes on you today!"

Since he had contrived to step between her and the staircase she was unable to slip off. He was looking her over in a way that gave her the unpleasant sensation of having been stripped of her clothing; and although she was not at all afraid of him she would have been glad to have been able to escape. She said coolly: "You might have seen me at the breakfast-table, but you are not an early riser. Now, if you please, I must go to my grandfather!"

He did not move from the stairs. "Ah, that's a slap for me, ain't it? I shall have to mend my ways, shan't I? Why don't you take me in hand, eh? Blister me if I wouldn't enjoy being schooled by you! I don't know when I've taken such a fancy to a girl as I have to you, and that's the truth! Ay, you may look down that high-bred nose of yours, lass, and try to barn me you're a stone statue, but I know better! Full of spirit, you are, and that's how I like women to be—women and horses, and devilish alike they are! You're a beautiful stepper, and a ginger besides, and that's the metal for my money!"

"If we are to employ the language of the stables, Mr. Coate," she replied, rigid with wrath, "I will inform you that having lived all my life with a nonpareil I have nothing but contempt for mere whipsters! Now, if you will be so obliging as to permit me to pass——!"

She had the momentary satisfaction of knowing that she had touched him on the raw, for he flushed darkly, but she regretted it an instant later. He strode up to her, an ugly look in his face, and said in a thickened voice: "Contempt, eh? We'll see that!" He flung his arms round her before she could evade him, chuckling deep in his chest.

She was a strong woman, and as tall as he, but found herself helpless.

He was immensely powerful, and seemed to control her struggles without any particular effort. "Kiss and be friends, now!" he said, his breath hot on her face.

A dry cough sounded from the staircase; a voice devoid of all expression said: "I beg pardon, miss: might I have a word with you, if convenient?"

Coate swore, and released Nell. For a moment she confronted him, still unafraid, but white with anger, her eyes blazing. Then she swept past him, and went up the stairs to where her grandfather's valet stood awaiting her. He stepped aside, bowing politely, and followed her to the gallery off which her own and her grandfather's apartments were situated.

"Thank you!" she said curtly. "I'm much obliged!"

"Not at all, miss," said Winkfield, as though such interventions were an accustomed part of his duties. "It was fortunate that I happened to be at hand. If I may say so, I feel that Mr. Coate would feel himself more at home in a different class of establishment. Perhaps, a hint to Mr. Henry——?"

"Quite useless! Don't disturb yourself, Winkfield! I'll take good care never to be alone with him again!"

"No, miss, it would be wiser, I expect. But if Sir Peter knew——"

"Winkfield, most earnestly I forbid you to breathe one syllable to him!"

"No, miss, and indeed I have not! But he knows more than we think for, and it's my belief he's fretting over it. He keeps asking me things, and wanting to know where you are, and the day he sent for Mr. Henry to come to his room he was too much like his old self—if you understand me!"

"We should not have allowed it. It put him in a passion didn't it?"

"Well, miss, he never could abide Mr. Henry, but you know as well as I do that it won't do to cross Sir Peter. What I didn't like was the way seeing Mr. Henry seemed to make Sir Peter feel his own helplessness more than he has done for a long time now. Several times he's said to me that he'll make us all know who's master at Kellands before he's booked. Then he gets restless, and testy, and I know he's been brooding over it, and raging in his mind because he hasn't the power to do so much as get up out of his chair without he has me to lift him."

She said in a breaking voice: "Oh, if he had but died when he had that stroke!"

"Yes, miss, I've often thought the same. It comes hard on a gentleman like Sir Peter to be as he is."

"Winkfield, you have not told him that my cousin has a friend staying here?"

"No one has told him that, miss, unless Mr. Henry did, but he knows it well enough."

"On no account must he be permitted to set eyes on the creature! We must—we must get rid of the pair of them!"

"Yes, miss, that's what I have been thinking myself. But without we tell Sir Peter the whole there's not much we can do. If it was only Mr. Henry, it would be enough for Sir Peter to tell him to be off: we could do the rest—if I may make so bold as to say so, Miss Nell! But that other! I don't doubt Sir Peter would have him out, if he had to send for a law-officer to do the trick, but, by what Dr. Bacup says, it would bring on another stroke if he was to get agitated."

"No, no!" Nell said, dashing a hand across her eyes.

"No, miss, that's my own feeling. I couldn't do it—not after all these years. We must hope that we can send Mr. Coate off without bringing Sir Peter into it." He added thoughtfully: "Betty forgot to put a hot brick in his bed last night, but he made no complaint. It won't do to damp the sheets, as I have told Rose, because we don't want him laid up on our hands; but I'd say he was one as is partial to good living, and that mutton you had for dinner yesterday, Miss Nell—well! Let alone Mrs. Parbold scorching it on the spit, which she did, and the tears running down her face, Rose tells me, because we all have our pride, and no one can send up a better dressed dinner than she can!"

"Winkfield!" Nell choked, between tears and laughter. "It was shocking! I was never so mortified!"

"No, miss, I'm sure! But Sir Peter had the wing of a chicken, poached just as he likes it, and a curd pudding with wine sauce," said Winkfield consolingly. "And Huby has been busy in the cellar all the morning, and no doubt he will warn you, miss, not to touch the burgundy at dinner. If you should be at liberty now, Sir Peter has been asking for you this hour past."

"I will come to him directly. I must put off this old riding-dress: you know how much he dislikes to see me shabbily gowned!"

She hurried away to her own bedchamber, to strip off the well-worn habit in which she spent the greater part of her days, and to put on instead a morning-gown of green velvet, not perhaps fashioned in the latest mode but not yet showing such signs of wear as would be perceptible to her grandfather. Ten minutes later she entered the dressing-room which formed an antechamber to Sir Peter's big bedroom, and tapped on the door between the two. It was opened to her by Winkfield, who gave her a significant look, but said nothing, and at once went away, leaving her alone with her grandfather.

"Nell?"

She crossed the floor to the wing-chair that stood beside the wide fireplace. "Yes, sir. Now, don't, don't scold me, for I have passed the most amusing morning!" she said, bending to kiss Sir Peter's brow.

He did not raise his head, which was sunk forward on his breast, but he glanced up at her under his brows, and lifted his right hand. The other was almost powerless, and lay lightly clenched on his knee. "Well?" he said.

His utterance was a little slurred, and he seemed to speak with a slight effort. He was the wreck of a once-big man, the flesh having wasted away from large bones. His left side was semi-paralysed, and it was only with his valet's assistance that he could move from his bed to a chair. He wore always a brocade dressing-gown, but every day it was Winkfield's duty to arrange a freshly laundered neck-cloth round his neck in the style he had adopted years earlier.

Nell took the hand held up to her, and sat down beside him. "Well! I conveyed our new gatekeeper to Tideswell, as you know, while Joseph took care of the pike."

"H'm! I trust he behaved himself!"

"With all the propriety in the world, sir! You need not look so suspiciously: he is most truly the gentleman."

"Much you know!" he grunted. "Playing off the airs of an exquisite, I daresay."

"Oh, no! nothing of the kind! He's a soldier, not a fribble, dearest! I thought his coat was very well cut, but it was quite plain, and put me in mind of the coats Jermyn used to wear."

"Scott," said Sir Peter. "If he was a Captain, and ain't hoaxing you! Most of the military men go to him—or they did, in my day."

"Very likely. At all events, there was no fault to be found with his air, or address, and I think you would say that he has a well-bred ease of manner. I found him excellent company, and I am sure he must have great delicacy of principle, for he was most steady in refusing to drive with me into the town! He said that it would not do, and obliged me to set him down before we reached it."

Sir Peter grunted again. "What did you talk of?" he demanded.