The Toll-Gate Read online

  ‘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 neckcloth 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.

  ‘Oh, all manner of things!’ she replied easily. ‘He told me many – many interesting things about the Pyrenees, for instance!’

  ‘He did, did he? Fellow sounds to me like a damned nincompoop!’ said Sir Peter irascibly.

  She laughed, but blushed too. ‘Oh, no! In fact, I fear he must cause his family the gravest anxiety with these whimsical starts of his! You, I think, would like him, sir. I have not, of course, seen him with a team, but I fancy he has good, even hands.’

  ‘That’s as may be. But what the devil’s he doing at the toll-house?’

  ‘Oh, diverting himself! I think he finds life sadly flat.’

  He said no more, and she picked up a newspaper, and glanced through it, knowing that although he might weary soon of conversation he liked to feel that she was in the room. She thought he had fallen into a light sleep, but he startled her suddenly by saying in an abrupt tone: ‘Who is the fellow you have staying in the house?’

  ‘Henry, Grandpapa?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, girl – or think me one! I want none of your bamboozling! Who is he?’

  ‘Oh, Coate!’ she said indifferently. ‘A friend of my cousin’s.’

  ‘Why hasn’t he been brought to see me?’

  ‘Because I am persuaded you would give the poor man one of your famous set-downs, sir,’ she replied, with great coolness. ‘He is not quite up to the trick, you know.’

  ‘Then what th