Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/562

554 Oh it could not,—it could not be Frederick Massingbird.

Which way should he bend his steps? Indoors, or away? Not indoors! He could scarcely bear to see his wife with this dreadful uncertainty upon him. Restless, anxious, perplexed, miserable, Lionel Verner turned towards Deerham.

There are some natures upon whom a secret, awful as this, tells with appalling force, rendering it next to impossible to keep silence. The imparting it to some friend, the speaking of it, appears to be a matter of dire necessity—and so it was in this instance to Lionel Verner.

He was on his way to the vicarage. Jan had mentioned that Mr. Bourne shared the knowledge—if knowledge it could be called: and he was one in whom might be placed entire trust.

He walked onwards, like one in a fever dream, nodding mechanically in answer to salutations; answering he knew not what if words were spoken to him. The vicarage joined the churchyard, and the vicar was standing in the latter as Lionel came up, watching two men who were digging a grave. He crossed over the mounds to shake hands with Lionel.

Lionel drew him into the vicarage garden, amidst the trees. It was shady there; the outer world shut out from eye and ear.

“I can’t beat about the bush; I can’t dissemble,” began Lionel, in deep agitation. “Tell me your true opinion of this business, for the love of heaven! I have come down to you for it.”

The vicar paused. “My dear friend, I feel almost afraid to give it to you.”

“I have been speaking with Jan. He thinks it may be Frederick Massingbird—not dead, but alive.”

“I fear it is,” answered the clergyman. “Within the last half-hour I have fully believed that it is.”

Lionel leaned his back against a tree, his arms folded. Tolerably calm outwardly: but he could not get the healthy blood back to his face. “Why within the last half-hour more than before?” he asked. “Has anything fresh happened?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Bourne. “I went down to Hook’s: the girl’s not expected to live the day through—but that you may have heard from Jan. In coming away, your gamekeeper met me. He stopped, and began asking my advice in a mysterious manner—whether, if a secret affecting his master had come to his knowledge, he ought, or ought not, to impart it to his master. I felt sure what the man was driving at—that it could be no other thing than this ghost affair—and gave him a hint to speak out to me in confidence. Which he did.”

“Well?” rejoined Lionel.

“He said,” continued Mr. Bourne, lowering his voice, “that he passed a man last night who, he was perfectly certain, was Frederick Massingbird. Not Frederick Massingbird’s ghost, as foolish people were fancying, Broom added, but Massingbird himself. He was in doubt whether or not it was his duty to acquaint Mr. Verner: and so he asked me. I bade him not acquaint you,” continued the vicar, “but to bury the suspicion within his own breast, breathing a word to none.”

Evidence upon evidence! Every moment brought less loop-hole of escape for Lionel to lean upon. “How can it be?” he gasped. “If he is not dead, where can he have been all this while?”

“I conclude it will turn out to be one of those every-day occurrences that have little marvel at all in them. My thoughts were busy upon it, while standing over the grave yonder. I suppose he must have been to the Diggings. Possibly laid up there from illness, and letters may have miscarried.”

“You feel little doubt upon the fact itself—that it is Frederick Massingbird?”

“I feel none. It is certainly he. Won’t you come in and sit down?”

“No, no,” said Lionel. And, drawing his hand from the vicar’s, he went forth again, he, and his heavy weight. Frederick Massingbird alive!

1845 there appeared an article in the “Edinburgh Review,” from the able pen of Mr. John Stuart Mill, wherein allusion was made to a small work published several years previously by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and which was intended to assist in enlightening the minds of the labouring classes with respect to the true rights of industry, and in dispelling certain prevalent but extremely erroneous ideas respecting the effects of machinery upon the value of human labour. In his remarks on this little book—which, by the by, was written by Mr. Charles Knight, and not by Lord Brougham, as popularly supposed—Mr. Mill stated that it contained some advice to the working classes “which produced considerable comment at the time (1831). It exhorted them to become capitalists. To most labouring men who read it, this exhortation probably appeared ironical. But some of the more intelligent of the class found a meaning in it. It did occur to them that there was a mode in which they could make themselves capitalists. Not, of course, individually, but by bringing their small means into a common fund, by forming a numerous partnership or joint-stock, they could, as it seemed to them, become their own employers, dispense with the agency of receivers of profit, and share amongst themselves the entire produce of their labour. This was a most desirable experiment. It would have been an excellent thing to have ascertained whether any great industrial enterprise, a manufactory for example, could be successfully carried out upon this principle.” But it so happened that while Mr. Mill was thus giving utterance to the foregoing opinions, a few simple-minded working men, with stout arms and trusty hearts, had actually commenced the “desirable experiment.” The poor fellows had been nearly ruined by a strike which had taken place in their trade, and were naturally somewhat weary of a policy which produced no other results to themselves than misery and starvation, without any compensating advantages. This led to some discussion on their part, during which the question of industrial organisation was mooted with success; and immediately afterwards was formed that