Free The Master of Liversedge by Alice Chetwynd Ley

seemed to her to be neither a patient nor a particularly understanding man, in spite of the fact that Nick Bradley had spoken well of him. Moreover, he had warned Mary specifically against her cousin’s meddling in matters of this kind.
    It was useless, however. She could see that John was powerless to resist the appeal of a fellow creature in need.
    Dismayed, she heard him give his word to George Mellor; and knew that nothing she could say thereafter — indeed, nothing on earth save death itself — would suffice to make him break it.
     

 
    SEVEN: A DEPUTATION TO MR. ARKWRIGHT
     
    Standing silently beside her cousin and Mrs. Duckworth, the housekeeper, in the narrow, wooden pew, Mary glanced covertly around the little village church. A fair-sized congregation was present, composed for the most part of croppers and their families. Their patient, submissive faces gave no hint of the feelings which had given rise to the violent happenings of the last few days. They stood quietly enough now, their work-worn hands gripping the rail in front of them as they waited for the service to begin.
    She saw the Arkwright family approaching down the aisle, and she quickly turned her head to the front. They entered the opposite pew, so that she had ample opportunity to study them if she wished. Her glance lingered particularly on Caroline, whom so far she had not met. She liked what she saw: the eager, vital face promised intelligence, and there was warmth in the smile which the girl turned from time to time on her stepbrother. William Arkwright himself stood stiff and unsmiling beside Caroline and her mother, who was finely dressed in a fur-trimmed black velvet pelisse and an over-elaborate purple bonnet with ostrich plumes. Mrs. Arkwright looked plump, contented and of a different cast of mind from her young daughter. Mary hazarded a guess that if Mrs. Arkwright alone had been in charge of Caroline, the girl would have been sadly spoilt. She glanced again at her employer, and decided that as long as he kept the reins in his hands, there was little fear of such an outcome. Indeed, the trouble might be that someday the liveliness of the girl would run counter to her stepbrother’s autocracy. Who would win, then, Mary wondered? Physically, they were much alike; but she had yet to discover if they shared the unyielding disposition which she had already noticed in William Arkwright.
    Her uncle’s sermon was commendably short, for he knew the difficulties of housewives who wished to do justice to the one meat dinner of the week which they could afford to put before their families. His exposition of the text from Corinthians ‘Be of one mind, live in peace’ was scholarly, but made no reference to the recent violations of peace in the neighbourhood. He had always been an unworldly man, Mary reflected, and of course his deafness served to isolate him somewhat from the troubles around him; but surely he could not really be as unaware of them as he appeared to be? She glanced at John, sitting soberly beside her; and wondered if he, too, found his father’s sermons out of touch with the harsh realities which surrounded them. In his father’s place, could John have found words which would have whipped expression into the polite, blank faces of the congregation, and found an echo in their hearts?
    She caught Mrs. Arkwright’s eye upon her, and looked down at the hymn book which was clasped in her hands, a faint blush rising to her cheek.
    The service over, they all filed slowly out of church into the cold, fitful sunshine, some standing for a while in small groups, idly chatting. Mrs. Duckworth was soon pounced upon by a neighbour, and Mary and John were left for a moment standing together in the middle of the path. She started to say something, but stopped as she noticed that his gaze was fixed in another direction. Her eyes followed his, until they came to rest on a figure standing at some distance away among the gravestones, half