Lord Winterbourne

“ Winterbourne looked along the path and saw a beautiful young lady advancing. “American girls are the best girls,” he said cheerfully to his young companion.
“My sister ain’t the best!” the child declared. “She’s always blowing at me.”
“I imagine that is your fault, not hers,” said Winterbourne. The young lady meanwhile had drawn near. She was dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and flounces, and knots of pale-colored ribbon. She was bareheaded, but she balanced in her hand a large parasol, with a deep border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty. ”

“ Winterbourne flattered himself that he had taken his measure. "He is not a gentleman," said the young American; "he is only a clever imitation of one. He is a music master, or a penny-a-liner, or a third-rate artist. D'n his good looks!" Mr. Giovanelli had certainly a very pretty face; but Winterbourne felt a superior indignation at his own lovely fellow countrywoman's not knowing the difference between a spurious gentleman and a real one. Giovanelli chattered and jested and made himself wonderfully agreeable. ”

“ It’s the climate that makes them come out. In America they didn’t come out. It’s these hotels.”
Winterbourne was much amused. “If you eat three lumps of sugar, your mother will certainly slap you,” he said.
“She’s got to give me some candy, then,” rejoined his young interlocutor. “I can’t get any candy here—any American candy. American candy’s the best candy.”
“And are American little boys the best little boys?” asked Winterbourne.
“I don’t know. I’m an American boy,” said the child.
“I see you are one of the best!” laughed Winterbourne.
“Are you an American man?” ”

“ Would a nice girl, even allowing for her being a little American flirt, make a rendezvous with a presumably low-lived foreigner? The rendezvous in this case, indeed, had been in broad daylight and in the most crowded corner of Rome, but was it not impossible to regard the choice of these circumstances as a proof of extreme cynicism? Singular though it may seem, Winterbourne was vexed that the young girl, in joining her amoroso, should not appear more impatient of his own company, and he was vexed because of his inclination. ”

“ Winterbourne asked—"an affair that goes on with such peculiar publicity?"
"That's their folly," said Mrs. Costello; "it's not their merit."
"No," rejoined Winterbourne, with something of that pensiveness to which his aunt had alluded. "I don't believe that there is anything to be called an intrigue." ”

“ Winterbourne, rather helplessly.
"That's just what my brother says," cried Miss Raeburn, exasperated. "He won't hear a word—declares she is odd and original, and that Aldous will soon know how to manage her. It's all very well; nowadays men don't manage their wives; that's all gone with the rest. And I am sure, my dear, if she behaves after she is married as she is doing now, with that most objectionable person Mr. Wharton—walking, and talking, and taking up his ideas, and going to his meetings—she'll be a handful for any husband."
"Mr. Wharton!" said Lady Winterbourne, astonished. ”

“ WINTERBOURNE, WALTER (1225?–1305) , cardinal, probably took his family name from one of the numerous villages called Winterbourne in the immediate proximity of Salisbury. He was born about 1225 at Old or New Sarum (Hoare, Wiltshire, vi. 616) , and entered the order of friars preachers, or Dominicans. Fuller, drawing partly on Nicholas Trivet [q. v.] and partly on his imagination, says that Winterbourne was ‘in his youth a good poet and an orator; when a man an acute philosopher ... ”

“ No one talked less scandal, no one put the uglinesses of life away from her with a hastier hand than Lady Winterbourne. She was one of the most consistent of moral epicures.
"Yes, extremely disagreeable," said Miss Raeburn, sitting bolt upright. "The man has no principles—never had any, since he was a child in petticoats. I know Aldous thinks him unscrupulous in politics and everything else. ”

“ What, will not one be king? Will not one here lay hold upon my state? I am queen of you for all things come and gone. Nay, my chief lady, and no meaner one, The chiefest of my maidens, shall bear this And give it to my prisoner for a grace; Who shall deny me? who shall do me wrong? Bear greeting to the lord of Chastelard, And this withal for respite of his life, For by my head he shall die no such way: Nay, sweet, no words, but hence and back again.
[Exit MARY BEATON.]
Farewell, dear lords; ye have shown grace to me, And some time I will thank you as I may ”

“ From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, Winterborne, though not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the background of human life and action thereabout—a feat not particularly difficult of performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a lost prestige. Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly launched was stranded and lost. ”

“ Winterman, at the same moment, brought his palm down with a sudden crash on the pile of manuscript covering the desk.
“What's the matter?” Bernald gasped.
“My match wasn't out. In another minute the destruction of the library of Alexandria would have been a trifle compared to what you'd have seen.” Winterman, with his large deep laugh, shook out the smouldering sheets. “And I should have been a pensioner on Doctor Bob the Lord knows how much longer!”
Bernald pulled himself together. “You've really got going again? The thing's actually getting into shape?” ”

“ The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winterborne, though he divined that they were a quotation, to be somehow the result of his lost love's charms upon Fitzpiers.
"You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir," he said, with a sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to mention Grace by name.
"Oh no—I am not that, Winterborne; people living insulated, as I do by the solitude of this place, get charged with emotive fluid like a Leyden-jar with electric, for want of some conductor at hand to disperse it. ”

“ Winterfeld shall answer to me for this surreptitious love-making, for the sweet speeches with which he has befooled you into giving a promise--a promise which is null and void, seeing that you are not free to dispose of yourself as yet. He courts in you the presumptive heiress, and calculates that through her he shall attain to wealth and influence. He may find himself deceived. I alone have to decide as to your future, which is altogether in my hands. Your lot in life depends on me, and if I accord to you a brilliant position, I shall expect implicit obedience in return. ”

“ Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had caught the doctor peering at, was represented by these accessories. With a wary grimness, partly in his character, partly induced by the circumstances, he evaded an answer by saying, “I saw a young lady talking to Mrs. Charmond the other day; perhaps it was she.”
Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him looking over the hedge. “It might have been,” he said. “She is quite a gentlewoman—the one I mean. She cannot be a permanent resident in Hintock or I should have seen her before. Nor does she look like one.” ”

“ There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, "You mean this, Grace—that I am to help you to get away?"
"Yes," said she. "Appearance is no matter, when the reality is right. I have said to myself I can trust you." ”

“ He pitied Melbury for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw that the aging man must have suffered acutely to be weakened to this unreasoning desire.
Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any cynical conjecture that the timber-merchant, in his intense affection for Grace, was courting him now because that young lady, when disunited, would be left in an anomalous position, to escape which a bad husband was better than none. ”

“ But Randolph immediately added, "My father's in Schenectady. He's got a big business. My father's rich, you bet!"
"Well!" ejaculated Miss Miller, lowering her parasol and looking at the embroidered border. Winterbourne presently released the child, who departed, dragging his alpenstock along the path. "He doesn't like Europe," said the young girl. "He wants to go back."
"To Schenectady, you mean?"
"Yes; he wants to go right home. He hasn't got any boys here. There is one boy here, but he always goes round with a teacher; they won't let him play." ”

“ Touched by the genuine loving-kindness which had lain at the foundation of these words, and much moved, Winterborne turned his face aside, as he took her by the hand. He was grieved that he had criticised her.
"You are very good, dear Grace," he said, in a low voice. "You are better, much better, than you used to be." ”

“ They were now opposite Melbury’s house, and the timber-merchant pressed Winterborne to enter, Grace being out of the way.
“Pull round the settle, Giles,” said the timber-merchant, as soon as they were within. “I should like to have a serious talk with you.”
Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and in quite a friendly way. He declared that he did not like to be hard on a man when he was in difficulty; but he really did not see how Winterborne could marry his daughter now, without even a house to take her to. ”

“ The Baron never doubted that the connection with Winterfeld had been renewed in the capital. The tyrannical guardian, who had so long stood between the young people, separating them, had now stepped back, leaving them free to draw together again; and the Baroness was far too weak, too wanting in character, to oppose any lasting resistance to her daughter's wishes, when no longer fettered by fear of her brother-in-law. Besides, Winterfeld's position had changed. He had risen in a most unexpected manner, and would surely rise further--thus the great barrier to the marriage was withdrawn. ”

“ In this he kept his leases, which had remained there unopened ever since his father's death. It was the usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents. Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them over. They were ordinary leases for three lives, which a member of the South family, some fifty years before this time, had accepted of the lord of the manor in lieu of certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration of having the dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had come into his father's possession chiefly through his mother, who was a South. ”

“ Perhaps the Baron would have shown himself less obstinate, had the signal for the general onslaught been given by any other than George Winterfeld. The thought of owing his fall to the man whom of all men he most ardently hated, as standing between himself and Gabrielle, made Raven desperate, and robbed him of his wonted clearness of judgment. ”

“ The young lady inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons again; and Winterbourne presently risked an observation upon the beauty of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed, for he had begun to perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed herself. ”

“ Winterfeld was the first man who approached you after you ceased to be a child, the first who ventured to speak to you words of love, and you shut your eyes and dreamed that you too loved, conjuring up the phantom of that which never existed. ”

“ The postman’s time for passing was just after Melbury’s men had assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on his own account would lend assistance there, used to go out into the lane every morning and meet the post-man at the end of one of the green rides through the hazel copse, in the straight stretch of which his laden figure could be seen a long way off. Grace also was very anxious; more anxious than her father; more, perhaps, than Winterborne himself. ”

“ Hence, Winterborne perceived that, in this new beginning, the necessary care not to compromise Grace by too early advances must be exercised by himself.
Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as heretofore. There is no such thing as a stationary love: men are either loving more or loving less. But Giles himself recognized no decline in his sense of her dearness. If the flame did indeed burn lower now than when he had fetched her from Sherton at her last return from school, the marvel was small. ”

“ Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and without discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride in the discernment of a somewhat rare power in him—that of keeping not only judgment but emotion suspended in difficult cases. But he noted it not. Neither did he observe what was also the fact, that though he cherished a true and warm feeling towards Grace Melbury, he was not altogether her fool just now. ”

“ The consistent steady madness of Chastelard's passion, which, mad as it is, lies deeper than madness, and, wild as it is burns always without flame, is displayed in a way which is, most masterly. As for the Queen, we are quite of opinion that Mr. Swinburne has brought that woman to light again. It will not do, perhaps, to peer closely into her portrait as it lies in these pages; if we do, we become uneasily conscious of blotchy workmanship, with lights too sudden, and shades too deep, and broken harmonies of colour. ”

“ There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance; a man who, if it were possible to save Winterborne's life, had the brain most likely to do it. If human pressure could bring him, that man ought to be brought to the sick Giles's side. The attempt should be made.
Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, and yet she postponed her departure. At last, when it was after eleven o'clock, Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it seemed to afford her an opportunity. ”