Through the Fray: A Tale of the Luddite Riots by G. A. Henty (novel books to read txt) 📕

woman and much attached to you. At the same time these old servants always turn out a mistake under changed circumstances. She would never have been comfortable or contented. She has, my dear if I may say so, been mistress too long, and as I intend you to be mistress of my house, it is much better that she should go.”

As Mrs. Sankey had certain doubts herself as to whether Abijah would be a success in the new home, the subject was dropped, and it became an understood thing that Abijah would leave after the wedding.

The newly married couple were absent for three weeks. Until two days before their return Abijah remained in the old house with the young Sankeys; then they moved into their new home, and she went off to her native village ten miles distant away on the moors. The next day there was a sale at the old house. A few, a very few, of the things had been moved. Everything else was sold, to the deep indignation of Ned, who was at once grieved and angry that all the articles of furniture which he associated with his father should be parted with. Abijah shared the boy's feelings in this respect, and at the sale all the furniture and fittings of Captain Sankey's study were bought by a friendly grocer on her behalf, and the morning after the sale a badly written letter, for Abijah's education had been neglected, was placed in Ned's hand.

“MY DEAR MASTER NED: Knowing as it cut you to the heart that everything should go away into the hands of strangers, I have made so bold as to ask Mr. Willcox for to buy all the furniter and books in maister's study. He is a-going to stow them away in a dry loft, and when so bee as you gets a home of your own there they is for you; they are sure not to fetch much, and when you gets a rich man you can pay me for them; not as that matters at all one way or the other. I have been a-saving up pretty nigh all my wages from the day as you was born, and is quite comfortable off. Write me a letter soon, dearie, to tell me as how things is going on. Your affectionate nurse, ABIJAH WOLF.”

Although Ned was a lad of sixteen, he had a great cry over this letter, but it did him good, and it was with a softer heart that he prepared to receive his mother and her husband that evening. The meeting passed off better than he had anticipated. Mrs. Mulready was really affected at seeing her children again, and embraced them, Ned thought, with more fondness than she had done when they went away. Mr. Mulready spoke genially and kindly, and Ned began to hope that things would not be so bad after all.

The next morning, to his surprise, his mother appeared at breakfast, a thing which he could not remember that she had ever done before, and yet the hour was an early one, as her husband wanted to be off to the mill. During the meal Mr. Mulready spoke sharply two or three times, and it seemed to Ned that his mother was nervously anxious to please him.

“Things are not going on so well after all,” he said to himself as he walked with his brother to school. “Mother has changed already; I can see that she isn't a bit like herself. There she was fussing over whether he had enough sugar with his tea, and whether the kidneys were done enough for him; then her coming down to breakfast was wonderful. I expect she has found already that somebody else's will besides her own has got to be consulted; it's pretty soon for her to have begun to learn the lesson.”

It was very soon manifest that Mr. Mulready was master in his own house. He still looked pleasant and smiled, for his smile was a habitual one; but there was a sharpness in the ring of his voice, an impatience if everything was not exactly as he wished. He roughly silenced Charlie and Lucy if they spoke when he was reading his paper at breakfast, and he spoke snappishly to his wife when she asked him a question on such occasions. Ned felt his face burn, as with his eyes on his plate he continued his meal. To him Mr. Mulready seldom spoke unless it was absolutely necessary.

Ned often caught himself wondering over the change which had taken place in his mother. All the ways and habits of an invalid had disappeared. She not only gave directions for the management of the house, but looked after everything herself, and was forever going upstairs and down, seeing that everything was properly done. However sharply Mr. Mulready spoke she never replied in the same tone. A little flush of color would come into her cheek, but she would pass it off lightly, and at all times she appeared nervously anxious to please him. Ned wondered much over the change.

“He is a tyrant,” he said, “and she has learned it already; but I do think she loves him. Fancy my mother coming to be the slave of a man like this! I suppose,” he laughed bitterly, “it's the story of 'a woman, a dog, and a walnut tree, the more you thrash them the better they will be.' My father spent his whole life in making hers easy, and in sparing her from every care and trouble, and I don't believe she cared half as much for him as she does for this man who is her master.”

For some months Mr. Mulready was very busy at his mill. A steam engine was being erected, new machinery brought in, and he was away the greater part of his time superintending it.

One day at breakfast, a short time before all was in readiness for a start with the new plant, Mr. Mulready opened a letter directed in a sprawling and ill written hand which lay at the top of the pile by his plate. Ned happened to notice his face, and saw the color fade out from it as he glanced at the contents. The mouth remained as usual, set in a smile, but the rest of the face expressed agitation and fear. The hand which held the letter shook. Mrs. Mulready, whose eyes seldom left her husband's face when he was in the room, also noticed the change.

“Is anything the matter, William?”

“Oh! nothing,” he said with an unnatural laugh, “only a little attempt to frighten me.”

“An attempt which has succeeded,” Ned said to himself, “whatever it is.”

Mr. Mulready passed the letter over to his wife. It was a rough piece of paper; at the top was scrawled the outline of a coffin underneath which was written:

“MR. MULREADY: Sir, this is to give you warning that if you uses the new machinery you are a dead man. You have been a marked man for a long time for your tyrannical ways, but as long as you didn't get the new machinery we let you live; but we has come to the end of it now; the day as you turns on steam we burns your mill to the ground and shoots you, so now you knows it.”

At the bottom of this was signed the words “Captain Lud.”

“Oh! William,” Mrs. Mulready cried, “you will never do it! You will never risk your life at the hands of these terrible people!”

All the thin veneer of politeness was cracked by this blow, and Mr. Mulready said sullenly:

“Nice thing indeed; after I have married to get this money, and then not