Philip Winwood

“ Just then he noticed Philip Winwood, who had viewed every detail of the scene with wonder, and who now regarded Ned with a kind of vaguely disliking curiosity, such as one bestows on some sinister-looking strange animal. Philip's look was, of course, unconscious, but none the less clearly to be read for that. Ned Faringfield, pausing on his way, stared at the unknown lad, with an expression of insolent inquiry. Not daring to stay for questions, but observing the valise, he seemed to become aware that the newcomer was an already accepted guest of the house ”

“ Large flakes were falling softly on snow already laid. Darkness had caught up with us on the way home, and when we came in sight of the cheery light enframing the Faringfields' wide front door, and showing also from the windows at one side, I was not sorry I was to eat supper with them that evening, my mother having gone sleighing to visit the Murrays at Incledon, with whom she was to pass the night. As we neared the door, tired and hungry, whom should we see coming toward it from the other direction but Philip Winwood. He had worked over the usual time at the warehouse. ”

“ So will the critical occurrences of a day fill chapters, after those of a year have failed to yield more material than will eke out a paragraph. Experience proceeds by fits and starts. Only in fiction does a career run in an unbroken line of adventures or memorable incidents.
The personal life of Philip Winwood, as distinguished from his military career, which had no difference from that of other commanders of rebel partisan horse, and which needs no record at my hands, was marked by no conspicuous event from the night when he learned and defeated Madge's plot, to the end of the war. ”

“ Philip Winwood!"
Philip, though an ashen hue about the lips showed what was passing in his heart, tried to take the bitterness from the situation by treating it playfully. "You see, Mr. Faringfield, if we are indeed rebels against our king, we are paid by our wives turning rebels against ourselves."
"You cannot make a joke of it, sir," said Margaret, with a menacing coldness in her tone. "'Tis little need the king has of my influence, I fancy; he has armies to fight his battles. ”

“ The first reports said nothing of Winwood. When Margaret heard the news, she turned white as a sheet; and at this triumph of British arms my joy was far outweighed, Mr. Faringfield's grief multiplied, by fears lest Philip, who we knew would shirk no danger, had met a fate similar to his commander's. But subsequent news told us that he was a prisoner, though severely wounded. We comforted ourselves with considering that he was like to receive good nursing from the French nuns of Quebec. And eventually we found the name of Captain Winwood in a list of rebel prisoners who were to be exchanged ”

“ The sneers cast by one Major Wheeler upon us loyalists, and upon our reasons for standing by the king, got me into a duel with him at Weehawken, wherein I gave him the only wound he ever received through his attachment to the cause of Independence. Another such affair, which I had a short time afterward, near the Bowery lane, and in which I shot a Captain Appleby's ear off, was attributed by my mother to the same cause; but the real reason was that the fellow had uttered an atrocious slander of Philip Winwood in connection with the departure of Phil's wife. ”

“ It was under Montgomery that Philip Winwood took service, enlisting as a private soldier, but soon revealing such knowledge of military matters that he was speedily, in the off-hand manner characteristic of improvised armies, made a lieutenant. This was a little strange, seeing that there was a mighty scramble for commissions, nine out of every ten patriots, however raw, clamouring to be officers; and it shows that sometimes (though 'tis not often) modest merit will win as well as self-assertive incompetence. Philip had obtained his acquaintance with military forms from books ”

“ I'm not as bad as some; I can up and confess, when all's over. Well, as I was about to say, we had everything ready, and the night was set; and then, all of a sudden, Phil Winwood swoops down on me; treats me in a most unbrotherly fashion, I must say" (Ned cast an oblique look at his embarrassed shoulder) ; "and alarmed the camp. And when the British party rode up, instead of catching Washington they caught hell. And I leave it to you, sir, whether your daughter there, after playing the traitor to her husband's cause, for the sake of her lover ”

“ Madge tittered openly, and Philip Winwood looked puzzled. Mr. Faringfield answered:
"One can see he is a healthy lad, and cleanly, though he is tired and dusty from his journey. He may occupy the end garret room. 'Tis an odd travelling companion you carry, my boy. ”

“ Philip's Arrival in New York.
'Tis not the practice of writers to choose for biography men who have made no more noise in the world than Captain Winwood has; nor the act of gentlemen, in ordinary cases, to publish such private matters as this recital will present. But I consider, on the one hand, that Winwood's history contains as much of interest, and as good an example of manly virtues, as will be found in the life of many a hero more renowned ”

“ I Meet an Old Friend in the Dark.
I shall not give an account of my military service, since it entered little into the history of Philip Winwood. 'Twas our duty to help man the outposts that guarded the island at whose Southern extremity New York lies, from rebel attack; especially from the harassments of the partisan troops, and irregular Whiggery, who would swoop down in raiding parties, cut off our foragers, drive back our wood-cutters, and annoy us in a thousand ways. ”

“ Presently he looked about him, and singled out an acquaintance, to whom he made his way. Five minutes later he was being introduced, as Captain Falconer, to Mrs. Winwood.
"'Faith," said he, in a courteous, subdued voice, after bowing very low, "I did not think to find a lady so recently from St. James', in this place. One might swear, looking at you, madam, that this was Almack's."
"Sir, you speak to one that never saw St. James' but in imagination," said Margaret, coolly. "Sure one can be white, and moderately civil, and yet be of New York." ”

“ Faringfield's. Or perhaps 'twas indeed a pride, which made them resentful of the superiority assumed by native Englishmen over them as colonists. Or they may have felt that they should actually become slaves in submitting to be taxed by a parliament in which they were not represented. In any case, they (like Philip Winwood and Mr. Faringfield, the Adamses of Boston, and thousands of others) had motives that outweighed in them the sentiment of loyalty, the passion of attachment to the land whence we had drawn our race and still drew our culture and all our refinements and graces. ”

“ On a morning like this, in the civil manner of gentlemen, to make of such a marvellous living, thinking, feeling machine a poor heap of senseless flesh and bone that can only rot:—and all in the time of a sword-thrust!"
"Tut!" said I, "the world is the better for the riddance. Think of Tom, and all else!"
"I know it," said Phil, conquering his weakness. "And such men know what they risk when they break into the happiness of others. ”

“ Philip tied his horse thereunder, and, noting a kind of dim glow through the oiled paper that filled the cabin's single window, gave two double knocks followed by a single one, upon the plank door. This was soon opened, and Philip admitted to the presence of the single occupant, an uncouth fellow, fisherman and hunter, whose acquaintance he had made in patrolling the New Jersey side at the head of his troop. The man was at heart with the rebels, and Winwood knew with whom he had to deal. ”

“ Lawrence, the Richelieu, the lakes, and the Hudson. It was now Winter, and only Winwood's impatience to resume service could have tempted them to such a journey in that season.
They came part way afoot, receiving guidance now from some solitary fur-capped courier du bois clad in skins and hoofed with snow-shoes, now from some peaceful Indian, now from the cowled brothers of, some forest monastery which gave them a night's shelter also. Portions of the journey they made upon sledges driven by poor habitans dwelling in the far-apart villages or solitary farmhouses. ”

“ The kitten drew back from the stately gentleman's attempt to tap its nose with his finger, and evinced a desire to make the acquaintance of his wife, toward whom it put forth its head as far as possible out of its basket, beginning the while to purr.
"Look, mamma, it wants to come to you," cried little Tom, delighted.
"Cats and dogs always make friends quicker with handsome people," said Philip Winwood, with no other intent than merely to utter a fact, of which those who observe the lower animals are well aware. ”

“ By good luck I disarmed the man without our receiving more than a small scratch apiece; and subsequently brought him to the humbleness of a fawning spaniel, by a mien and tone of half-threatening superiority which never fail of reducing such high-talking sparks to abject meekness. 'Twas a trick of pretended bullying, which we long-suffering Americans were driven to adopt in self-defence against certain derisive, contemptuous praters that came to our shores from Europe. But 'tis more to my purpose, as the biographer of Philip Winwood, to continue upon the subject of Captain Falconer. ”

“ The snow on the ground enabled the two to descry each other. Winwood saw the man raise a musket to his shoulder.
"A word with you, friend," said Philip, and strode swiftly forward ere the sentinel (who was a loyalist volunteer, not a British regular) had the wit to fire. Catching the musket-barrel with one hand, Winwood clapped his pistol to the soldier's breast with the other.
"Now," says he, "if you give a sound, I'll send a bullet through you. If I pass here, 'twill bring you no harm, for none shall know it but us two. Let go your musket a moment—I'll give it back to you, man." ”

“ But Philip, always curious upon matters of human experience, asked:
"What of the Irishman?"
"Driving in his chariot, the dog! Swaggering in Pall Mall; eating and drinking at taverns that it makes my mouth water to think of; laying his hundred guineas a throw, if he likes. Oh, the devil! The fat of London for that fellow; and me cast off here in New York to the most hellish dull life! 'Tisn't a fair dispensation; upon my soul it isn't!"
"And what made him so fortunate?" inquired Philip.
"Ay, that's the worst of it! What good are a man's relations? What good are mine, at least? ”

“ There was a saying in the American army, proceeding first from Major Harry Lee, of their famous Light Horse, that Captain Winwood was in America, in the smaller way his modesty permitted, what the Chevalier Bayard was in France, and Sir Philip Sidney in England. ”

“ You ought to be the last man in the world—"
Philip's mood had changed at thought of Ned's father; the old man's pride of the name, his secret and perilous devotion to the rebel cause: he deserved better of that cause than that his son should die branded as a traitor to it; and better of Phil than that by his hand that son should be slain.
"How can you let me have the names without loss of time, if I let you go, on condition of your giving our army a wide berth the rest of your days?" Philip asked, turning the captive over upon his back. ”

“ This consideration, which is far from a desire to compete with the young gentlemen who strive for farthings and fame, in Grub Street, is my apology for profaning with my unskilled hand the implement ennobled by the use of a Johnson and a Goldsmith, a Fielding and an Addison.
My acquaintance with the Captain's life, from the vantage of an eye-witness and comrade, goes back to the time when all of us concerned were children; to the very day, in truth, when Philip, a pale and slender lad of eleven years, first set foot in New York, and first set eye on Margaret Faringfield. ”

“ But at last she presented a brave face for me to kiss, though 'twas rather a cold, limp hand I pressed as she started down the ladder for the boat where Cornelius awaited.
"Good-bye, lad," said Phil, with the old smile, which had survived all his toils and hurts and sorrows; "I shall see you in London next, I hope. And trust me—about Fanny."
"Thank you, dear Phil, and God bless you! Always working for other people's happiness, when your own—well, good-bye!"
He had made no request as to my course in the possibility of my meeting Madge in London ”

“ Faringfield and Philip: they would be nobodies, in comparison with her: heroines belong to the whole world, and may have their choice of the world's rewards: they may go where they please, love whom they please, and no father nor husband may say them nay. Though I could not but be sad, for Philip's sake, at thought of what effect our success might have upon her, yet for the moment I seemed to view matters from her side, with her nature, and for that moment I felt that to disappoint her hopes would be a pity. ”

“ From the attempt which he was bent upon turning into a ridiculous abortion, if it lay in the power of man and horse to do so, Philip's thoughts went to the object of that attempt, Washington himself. He was thrilled at once with a greater love and admiration for that firm soul maintaining always its serenity against the onslaughts of men and circumstance, that soul so unshakable as to seem in the care of Fate itself. ”