Winnington

“ The laughter in Winnington's eyes again kindled hers.
"I was a handful—I know." There was a pause. Then she added—"And I'm afraid—I've gone on being a handful!" Gesture and tone showed that she spoke deliberately.
"Most people of spirit are—till they come to handle themselves," he replied, also with a slight change of tone.
"But that's just what women are never allowed to do, Mr. Winnington!" She turned suddenly red, and fronted him. "There's always some man, who claims to manage them and their affairs. We're always in leading-strings—nobody ever admits we're grown up. ”

“ But that any young woman—any motherless and fatherless girl—should not think herself the most lucky of mortals to have obtained Mark Winnington as guide and defender, with first claim on his time, his brains, his kindness, seemed incredible to Mark's old friend and neighbour, accustomed to the daily signs of his immense and deserved popularity. ”

“ For high on that wooded slope, a blaze was spreading to the skies—a blaze that grew with every second—illuminating with its flare the woods around it, the chimneys of the old house, the quiet stretches of the hill.
"Monk Lawrence is afire, Muster Winnington!" panted one of Winnington's own labourers who had outstripped the rest. "They're asking for you to come! They've telephoned to Latchford for the engines, and to Brownmouth and Wanchester too. They say it's burning like tow—there must be petrol in it, or summat. It's the women they say!—spite of Mr. Daunt and the perlice!" ”

“ Winnington looked at her with reverence. He knew all about her; so did many of the dwellers in the Maumsey neighbourhood. She had lived for half-a-century in the same little house in one of the back-streets of Latchford, a town of some ten thousand inhabitants. Through all that time her life had been given to what is called "rescue work"—though she herself rarely called it by that name. She loved those whom no one else would love—the meanest and feeblest of the outcast race. Every night her door stood on the latch, and as the years passed, thousands knew it. ”

“ Lady Tonbridge opened the drawing-room door with a scared face—
"What is it? There are people running up the drive. They're shouting something!"
Winnington rushed to the front door, Delia with him. With his first glance at the hill-side, he understood the meaning of the cries—of the crowd approaching. ”

“ The change which had tempered the splendid—or insolent—exuberance of her beauty, which Lathrop had perceived, had made it in Winnington's eyes infinitely more appealing, infinitely more seductive. Love and fear, mingled, had "passed into her face," like the sculptor's last subtle touches on the clay.
"Delia!" How all life seemed to have passed into a name! "I'm not sure that I ought to speak! I'm not sure it's fair. It—it seems like taking advantage. ”

“ Winnington recognised a Maumsey man, whom he had befriended in various ways, who owed his place indeed in the Metropolitan force to Winnington's good word.
"Hullo, Hewson—how are you? Flourishing?"
The man's face beamed again. He was thinking of a cricket match the year before under Winnington's captaincy. Like every member of the eleven, he would have faced "death and damnation" for the captain.
They walked along the man's beat together. A thought struck Winnington.
"You seem likely to have some disturbance here tomorrow?" he said, as they neared Westminster Bridge. ”

“ Suffrage when I was quite a child. And now, after the years we've
toiled and moiled, to see these mad women wrecking the whole thing!"
Winnington assented gravely.
"I don't wonder you feel it so. But you still want it—the vote—as much as ever?"
"Yes!" she said, at first with energy; and then on a more wavering note—"Yes,—but I admit a great many things have been done without it that I thought couldn't have been done. And these wild women give one to think. But you? Are you against us?—or has Miss Delia converted you?" ”

“ The two comforters of Euphrosyne, graceful little maids, with cherry-coloured jerseys over their white frocks, and golden brown hair tied with the large black bows of the Backfisch, were eager to share the lesson, and soon Winnington found himself the centre of a whole bevy of boys and girls who had run up to watch Euphrosyne's performance.
The English governess, a good girl, in spite of her accent, and the unconscious fraud she was thereby perpetrating on her employers, thought she had seldom witnessed a more agreeable scene. ”

“ The thin line of hurrying forms disappeared into darkness and distance, some one way, some another; and Winnington was left to feel that in what he had seen—this everyday incident of a London street—he had been aptly reminded of what a man who has his occupation and dwelling amid rural scenes and occupations too readily forgets—that toiling host of women, married and unmarried, which modern industry is every day using, or devouring, or wasting. The stream of lives rushes day by day through the industrial rapids ”

“ For, after all, he, Winnington, was a very busy man; and his life was already mortgaged in many directions. But as it was—yes—the task attracted him.
At the same time, the twinkle in his grey eyes shewed him ironically aware of himself.
"Understand, you old fool!—the smallest touch of philandering—and the whole business goes to pot. The girl would have you at her mercy—and the thing would become an odious muddle and hypocrisy, degrading to both. Can you trust yourself? You're not exactly made of flint: Can you play the part as it ought to be played?" ”

“ Man no doubt was still the stupid and vicious tyrant, the Man-Beast that Gertrude Marvell believed him. But here in this large English village, how the old primal relations stood out!—sorrow-laden and sin-stained often, yet how touching, how worthy, in the main, of reverence and tenderness! As they went in and out of the cottages of her father's estate, the cottages where Winnington was at home, and she a stranger, all that "other side" of any great argument began to speak to her—without words. ”

“ To see Mark Winnington aux prises with an adventure in which not even his tact, his knowledge of men and women, his candour, or his sweetness, might be sufficient to win success, piqued her curiosity; perhaps even flattered that slight inevitable malice, wherewith ordinary mortals protect themselves against the favourites of the gods. ”

“ But it seems to be all dropped."
"Provoking!" said Madeleine, drily—"considering how you've been slaving to please her—"
Winnington interrupted—not without annoyance—
"How can she think of anything else when she's once deep in this campaign? One must blame the people who led her into it!"
"Oh! I don't know!" said Lady Tonbridge, protesting. "She's a very clever young woman, with a strong will of her own."
"Captured just at the impressionable moment!" cried Winnington—"when a girl will do anything—believe anything—for the person she loves!" ”

“ But, in the first place, the extraordinary terms of Sir Robert's will had proved far more baffling than she and Delia had ever been willing to believe. And, in the next place, the personality of Mark Winnington had almost immediately presented itself to Gertrude as something she had never reckoned with. A blustering and tyrannical guardian would have been comparatively easy to fight. Winnington was formidable, not because he was hostile, resolutely hostile, to their whole propaganda of violence; that might only have spurred a strong-willed girl to more passionate extremes. ”

“ Patience then, and respect for honest and disinterested conviction, in any young and ardent soul; sharp discrimination between lawful and unlawful means of propaganda, between debate, and stone-throwing; no interference with the first, and a firm hand against the second:—surely, in that spirit, one might make something of the problem? Winnington was accustomed to be listened to, to get round obstacles that other men found insuperable. It was scarcely conceit, but a just self-confidence which suggested to him that perhaps Miss Blanchflower would not prove so difficult after all. ”

“ And amid a general shouting and scuffling, through which some stones were beginning to fly, Winnington found himself leaping on the waggon, followed by Andrews and a couple of police.
Delia confronted him—undaunted, though breathless.
"What do you want? We're all right!"
"You must come away at once. I can get you through the hotel."
"Not at all! We must put the Resolution."
"Come Miss!—" said the tall constable behind Winnington—"no use talking! There's a lot of fellows here that mean mischief. You go with this gentleman. He'll look after you." ”

“ But the recollection of their last meeting, and the sheer, inconvenient, shameful, joy of his presence there, opposite, interposed.
Winnington himself was quite cool; there were no signs whatever of any intention to renew their Friday's conversation. His manner and tone were just as usual. Some business at the Home Office, connected with his County Council work, called him to town. He should be staying at his Club in St. James's St. Alice Matheson also would be in town.
"Shall we join for a theatre, one night?" he asked her. ”

“ Winnington, jumping on the motor which he had placed opposite St. Margaret's, drew out some field-glasses, and scanned the advancing lines of women. The detachment coming from Whitehall seemed to be headed by the chiefs of the whole organisation, to judge from the glistening banner which floated above its foremost group. Winnington examined it closely. Gertrude Marvell was not there, nor Delia. Then he turned westwards. Ah, now he saw her! That surely was she!—in the front ranks of the lines coming from Milbank. ”

“ Such things temper the majesty of virtue, and make even the good human.
He had known and prescribed for Winnington since he was a boy in knickers; he was particularly attached to Lady Tonbridge. What he and Madeleine talked about is not of great importance to this narrative; but it is certain that France left the house in much concern for a man he loved, and a girl who, in the teeth of his hottest beliefs, had managed to touch his feelings.
Delia spent the day in packing. Winnington made no sign. ”

“ No one of course could live in England, and not be aware of the change which has passed over English girls in the same direction. But the Englishman always tacitly assumes that the foreigner is far behind him in all matters of open-air sport and physical development. Winnington had soon confessed the touch of national arrogance in his own surprise; and was now the keen and much attracted spectator.
On one of the grounds he saw the little German girl—Euphrosyne, as he had already dubbed her—having a lesson from a bullying elder brother. ”

“ Winnington's fee-book from 1671 was preserved at his seat of Stanford Court in Worcestershire, and it shows that his income from the law in 1675 exceeded 4,000l. In December 1674 he was created solicitor-general, and by the king's command he was returned to Parliament for the borough of Windsor on 19 Feb. ”

“ You have never made a mess of anything yet in your life. It will be a new experience."
Winnington protested hotly that her remark only shewed how little even intimate friends know of each other's messes, and that his were already legion. Lady Tonbridge threw him an incredulous look. As he sat there in his bronzed and vigorous manhood, the first crowsfeet just beginning to shew round the eyes, and the first streaks of grey in the brown curls, she said to herself that none of her young men acquaintance possessed half the physical attractiveness of Mark Winnington ”

“ Winnington, deep in gingerbread cake. "I leave it there—"
"Yes, jolly well do!" cried Nora, who had come to sit on a stool in front of her mother and Winnington, her eager eyes glancing from one to the other—"Don't start Mummy on servants, Mr. Winnington. If you do, I shall go to bed. There's only one thing worth talking about—and that's—"
"Maumsey!" he said, laughing at her.
"Have you accomplished anything?" asked Lady Tonbridge. "Don't tell me you've dislodged the Fury?"
Winnington shook his head.
"J'y suis—j'y reste!"
"I thought so. There is no civilised way by which men can eject a woman. ”

“ In August 1743, on Pelham's appointment as prime minister, Walpole, then Lord Orford, wrote to him, ‘Winnington must be had.’ When the king endeavoured in 1746 to form an administration under Lords Bath and Carteret, he relied on Winnington being chancellor of the exchequer and leading the House of Commons, but Winnington at his interview with George II thrice declined to accept the post. Next day the king told him that as the honestest man in his service he should have the honour of making the reconciliation between the sovereign and the Pelhams (Coxe, Pelham, i. 93, 111, 197, 288, 291) . ”

“ Winnington to-morrow or next day. He is evidently hurrying home—because of this."
There was silence for a few minutes; then the Captain said bluntly:
"It's an awful pity, you know, that kind of thing cropping up down here. We've escaped it so far."
"With such a lot of wild women about, what can you expect?" said the solicitor briskly. "Like the measles—sure to come our way sooner or later."
"Do you think they'll get what they want?" "What—the vote? No—not unless the men are fools." The refined, apostolic face set like iron.
"None of the womanly women want it," said the Captain with conviction. ”