Lady Strafford was admitted, without any delay, into the private apartment of the Queen, where Henriette Marie sat with two ladies in a sumptuous simplicity and elegant seclusion, which was noticeable in the extreme richness and good taste of the apartment, in the attire of the Queen herself, which, free from all fopperies of fashion, was of an exceeding fineness and grace, and in her occupation, which was that of sewing figures in beads on a casket of white silk.
The chamber was so delicately scented with attar of roses and perfume of jasmine and cascarilla, so finely warmed with a fire of cedar-wood, that every breath drawn there was a delight; the window was shrouded by peach-coloured velvet curtains, and the light came from a suspended silver lamp the flame of it softened by a screen of rosy silk; on the wall hung mellowed and ancient French tapestries, heavily shot with gold and silver, and the inlaid floor was covered with silk carpets. The Queen wore a pale saffron-coloured gown, and about her elbows and shoulders hung quantities of exquisite lace fastened by loops of pearl.
At the entrance of the Countess, she very sweetly dismissed the ladies and smiled at her visitor, then continued her task, thoughtfully selecting the beads from an ivory tray and sewing them skilfully on to the thick white silk.
The Countess remained standing before the Queen. She was now shown to be a woman of a carriage of pride andfire, fair-haired and swift-moving, with a great expression of energy which did not alter her wholly feminine attraction.
"Your Majesty will forgive this uncourtly coming of mine," she said, "but I have it on good authority that this inquiry into Irish Affairs is but a covert attack on my Lord Strafford."
"Yea, most certainly," returned the Queen, raising her soft eyes to the breathless lady.
"I saw John Pym to-day," cried the Countess, "and methought he had an air of triumph; besides, would the very boys in the street dare shout at me unless my lord's fall were assured?"
She twisted her hands together and sank on to a brocade stool near the window. The Queen slightly lifted her shoulders and smiled. She bitterly detested the English, who in their turn loathed her, both for her nationality and her religion, and even for the name "Mary," which the King gave her, and which was for ever connected in the popular mind with Papistry and with two queens who had been enemies of England. Therefore she was well-used to unpopularity and that hatred of the crowd of which Lady Strafford to-day had had a first taste.
"Why discourage yourself about that, madam?" she asked. "These creatures are not to be regarded."
"The House of Commons is to be regarded," returned Lady Strafford.
She spoke, despite herself, in a tone of respect for the power that threatened her husband, and the Frenchwoman's smile deepened.
"How afraid you all are of this Parliament," she said.
"Has it not lately shown that it is something to be afraid of?" cried the Countess.
The Queen continued to carefully select the tiny glass beads and to carefully thread them on the long white silk thread. To the Countess, who had never loved her, this absorption, at such an hour, in an occupation so trivial, was exasperating.
"I have come to Your Majesty on matter of serious moment," she said, and she spoke as one who had a claim; her husband had rendered great services to the Crown, and held his lofty position more by his own genius than by the King's favour. "Yesterday I sent an express to York, beseeching my lord to stay there with the army, and to-day Mr. Holles, one of my kinsmen, hath gone on the same errand. I beseech Your Majesty to add your weight to these entreaties of mine, and to ask His Majesty to bid my lord stay where he is safe."
At this the Queen's lovely right hand stopped work, and lay slack on the white cover of the casket, and with the other she put back the fine ringlets of black hair from her brow and looked full and delicately at the Countess.
"Both the King and I," she returned gently, "wrote to my lord before that—ay, the day before, and were you more often at court, madame, you would have heard of it."
An eloquent flush bespoke the relief and gratitude of the Countess.
"Then he is safe!" she exclaimed. "At York, amid the army, who can touch him!"
The Queen laughed lightly.
"Dear lady," she said, "thy lord is no longer at York, but on his way to London. At least, if he be as loyal as I think he be."
"London?" repeated Lady Strafford, as if it were a word of terror. "London? my lord cometh?"
"On the bidding of His Majesty and myself," answered Henriette Marie.
The Countess rose, she pushed back the dull crimson hood from her fair curls, and looked the Queen straightly in the face.
"Wherefore have you bidden him to London, madame?" she asked.
"That he may answer the charges that will be brought against him," said the Queen.
"And you have persuaded him to this!" cried the Countess. "I did think that I might have counted you and His Majesty among my lord's friends!"
Henriette Marie picked up a knot of white silk and began to disentangle the twisted strands.
"The Earl hath His Majesty's assurances and mine, of friendship and protection," she said with dignity touched with coldness.
Lady Strafford stood silent, utterly dismayed and bewildered. It seemed to her incredible that the King should have asked his hated minister to come to the capital at the moment when the popular fury against him had reached full height and the Commons were on the eve of impeaching him. She did not, could not, doubt that the King would wish to protect his favourite, but she felt an awful doubt as to his power. Had he not been forced to call the Parliament at the demand of the people?—was it not to please them that he had sent for the Earl?—so what else might he not consent to when driven into a corner!
The Countess shuddered; she thought of the angry crowd who had chased Laud from Lambeth Palace, who daily hooted at and insulted her when she went abroad, of the useless train-bands, of the general bottomless confusion and tumult, and she saw before her with a horrid vividness, the calm, weary face of John Pym, the man who led the Commons.
The Queen surveyed her narrowly, and observed the doubt and terror in her face.
"Are you afraid?" she asked. "Is it possible you think the King cannot protect his friends?"
Lady Strafford looked at the beautiful frail woman in her lace and silk who was so delicate, so charming, so gay, and who had more power over the King than his own conscience, and her heart gave a sick swerve. She never had, never could, wholly trust the French Papist Queen, for she was herself too wholly open and English in her nature.
Henriette Marie rose, and the jasmine perfume was stirred by the shaking of her garments.
"Is it not better," she said, with a lovely, tender smile, "that Lord Strafford should come here and face his enemies, than that he should lurk in York among his soldiers as if he feared what creatures like this Pym could do?"
"Madame," returned Lady Strafford, through white lips, "no one would ever think the Earl feared his enemies. But to come to London now is not courage but folly."
"It is obedience to the King's wishes," said the Queen, and a haughty fire sparkled in her dark liquid eyes.
"The King," returned the Countess, "asketh too much from his servant, by Heaven, madame! Those who love my lord would see him stay at York—"
"And those who love the King would obey him," flashed Henriette Marie.
The Countess controlled herself and swept a curtsey.
"I take my leave," she said. "May Your Majesty hold as ever sacred the promises with which you have brought my lord in among those who madden to destroy him! As for me, my heart is fallen low. Madame, a good night."
"I do forgive thy boldness for the sake of thy anxiety," said the Queen with sweetness. "We women have many desperate moments in these bitter times. A good night, my lady."
The Countess bent her proud blonde head and departed, and the Queen took up her beads and her silks and began again to work the bouquet of roses, lilies, and violets she was embroidering on the lid of the casket.
A thoughtful and haughty expression clouded the delicate lines of her face, and this proud pensive look did not alter when the hangings that had scarcely fallen into place behind Lady Strafford were again lifted, and the King, unattended, and with an air of haste, came into her presence.
"Has Strafford come?" she asked.
"Not yet!" replied Charles, in an unsteady voice, "and I have begun to wish I had not sent for him."
The Queen flung down her work and rose; the angry red of a deep passion stained her pallor.
"Canst thou never be resolute?" she cried. "Wilt thou for ever hesitate and change and regret every action? My lord, I would sooner be dead than see this temper in thee."
The King came and kissed her hand with a charming air of gallantry.
"Sweet," he said, in self-justification, "it is a horrid thing to command a man into the hands of his enemies."
"Thou knowest," returned Henriette Marie firmly, "that the Parliament and London both clamour for my lord and will not, by any means, be quiet until he appear. Thou knowest that we, that I, am in actual danger."
"Hush, dear heart—speak not of our danger," interrupted Charles hastily, "lest it seemeth we sacrifice our servant, our friend, to bare fear."
"Acquit thyself to thy conscience, Charles," she answered with limitless pride. "Art thou not the King? Must I remind thee of that as even now I had to remind my Lady Strafford?"
"My lady here?" murmured the King.
"Did you not meet her in your coming?"
As she spoke Henriette Marie moved towards a mirror that hung in one corner, and looked at her reflection with unseeing eyes, then turned the same abstracted glance on to the King.
The mirror was set in a deep border of embroidery which was framed in tortoise-shell, and the mellow colours of these, silks and shell, were softened into rosy dimness by the shaded light. This same glow was over the lovely figure of the Queen, her gown of ivory and amber tints, brightened into a knot of orange at her breast, and the pearls round her throat, and her soft, dark hair held no more lustre than the exquisite carnation of her fragilebeauty. She seemed utterly removed from all that was commonplace, tumultuous, noisy, coarse, and Charles, gazing at her with his soul in his eyes, was spurred and stung, as always when he regarded his wife, with bitter anger that he was not allowed to follow the bright guidance of this lady, and live with her in rich happiness and peace adorned with every fine and costly art, with all the intellectual delicacies and luxurious refinements which so pleased them both.
He loathed the English people who dragged him and even his adored wife into the clamorous atmosphere of intrigue and dissension, of controversy and riot.
To Charles there was one God, one Church, one King, one right—the right of God as manifested in the King's right; all else was to him mere vexation, disloyalty, and blasphemy. The popular side of the questions now rending the nations he did not even consider; he stood absolutely, without compromise or doubt, by his own simple, unyielding, ardent belief that he was King by God's will, and above and beyond all laws.
And his late impotency to enforce this view on his subjects had stirred his naturally gracious serene nature to deepest astonishment and anger. He was baffled, outraged, and inwardly humiliated, and he had already in his heart decided to be avenged on these gentlemen of the Commons whose clamours had so rudely broken his regal security, and on the stubborn English who had taken advantage of the rebellion of the Scots and his lack of money with which to defend himself, to force on him this hateful Parliament.
And now, when he knew that Pym, the inspiration and leader of these unruly gentlemen, was daring to strike at his own especial friend—minister and favourite, the man who was at once his guide and mouthpiece—he was bewildered by his intense inner fury, and pride as well as justice made him regret that he had summoned the Earl to London.
He gazed at the Queen where she stood in golden shadow, and these thoughts tormented him bitterly.
He knew her mind; her temper was even more despotic than his, and armed force was the first and only weapon she would have ever used in dealing with the people; her counsels were ever for the high hand, the haughty command, the merciless sword, and always the King hearkened to her. But his nature was more subtle, involved, and secretive than hers, and he knew better than she did the growing strength of the forces opposed to him; therefore he had often endeavoured to cope with his difficulties after a fashion she called irresolute and unstable.
The Queen broke the heavy silence.
"Strafford will come and we will protect him," she said; "that is enough."
"Nay, not enough," replied Charles, "for I must be avenged on these men who seek to touch my lord."
"Hadst thou hearkened to me," she murmured in a melancholy voice, "thou hadst been avenged on all these long since."
"Ay, Mary," cried the King earnestly, "we are not in a realm as loyal and steadfast as France, but rule a country that hath become a very hive of sedition, discontent, and treason, and it is well to tread cautiously."
"Caution is not a kingly virtue," said Henriette Marie, with that same sad sweetness of demeanour that was so exquisite a cloak for reproof.
"Trust me to act as is best for thee and for our sons," replied Charles firmly. "Trust me to so acquit myself to God as to be worthy of thy love."
The Queen regarded him with a wise little smile, then pulled a toy watch of diamonds from the lace at her bosom and glanced at it with eyes that flashed a little.
"With quick riding and sharp relays, my lord might almost be here," she remarked.
Charles sank into the great chair with arms by the window, and bent his gaze on the floor. His whole figurehad a drooping and fatigued look; he mechanically fingered the deep points of lace edging his cambric cuffs.
Henriette Marie dropped the watch back behind the knot of orange velvet on her breast, and her glance, that was so quick and keen behind the misty softness that veiled it, travelled rapidly over her husband's person.
She noted the grey hairs in his love-locks, the lines of anxiety across his brow and round his mouth, his unnatural pallor, the nervous twitching of his lips. He was the dearest thing on earth to her, but she had been married to him nearly twenty years and she knew his weakness, his faults, too well to any longer regard him as that Prince of romance which he had at first appeared to her. His figure, as she looked at him now, seemed to her strangely tragical; she could have wept for this man who leant on her when she should have leant on him, this man whom she would have despised if she had not loved.
"Holy Virgin," she said passionately to herself, "give him strength and me courage."
She went to her table and began to put away her work. The King raised his narrowed wistful eyes and said abruptly—
"Supposing the Earl doth not come? We are as likely to be hounded from Whitehall as His Grace from Lambeth if my lord disappoints the people."
"He will come," said Henriette Marie, delicately putting away her beads and silks in a tortoise-shell box lined with blue satin and redolent of English lavender.
Even as she spoke and before she had turned the silver key in the casket, her page had entered with the momentous news for which they both, in their different fashion, waited.
My Lord Strafford was in the audience chamber, all in a reek from hard riding.
They went down together, the King and Queen, and found the dark Earl, in boots and cloak still muddied, waiting for them.
"My faithful one!" cried Charles, "so thou art come!"and when Strafford would have knelt, he prevented him, and instead kissed him on the cheek.
"Sire," answered my lord, "I met your messengers on the road. I had already left York and was hastening to London to meet this accusation mine enemies do prepare to spring on me."
Charles seized his hand and grasped it warmly.
"I do approve thine action, and here confirm all expressions of favour I have ever given thee."
"Thy lady," added the Queen, smiling, "was, poor soul, fearful for thee, but thou art not, I think, seeing thou hast our protection and friendship."
"Madame," answered the Earl, fixing on her the powerful glance of his tired dark eyes, "I am fearful of nothing, I do thank my God, save only of some smirch on my honour, and that is surely safe while my gracious master holdeth me by the hand."
There was energy and purpose in his look, his carriage, his speech, his bearing had the unshakable composure of the fine man finely prepared for any fate.
"Sire," he said, speaking with great sincerity and emotion, "my own aim hath been to make thee and England great, and if His Majesty is satisfied, I hold myself acquitted of any wrong to any man, nor do I take any such on my conscience."
The King, much moved, clasped my lord's firm right hand closer in his own, and stood close beside him in intimate affection.
"What weapon hast thou prepared to fight these rascals with?" asked Henriette Marie.
"Madame," replied the Earl grimly, "I shall go down to the House to-morrow and impeach John Pym of high treason on the ground of his sympathy with, and negotiating with, the rebel Scots." He smiled fiercely as if to himself, and added, "My head or thine, and no time to lose!"
A sudden tremor shook the Queen, a silence fell on her vivacity.
"Come to us to-morrow," said Charles, "before going to Westminster—and now to thy waiting wife and a good night, dear lord."
"Truly this evening I am a weary man," smiled Strafford, and with that kissed the hands of his lieges and left them.
They stood silent after his going, not looking at each other.
They could hear the distant angry clamour of London at their gates.
The moon's circle was half-filled with light, a mist rose and hung above the river, a sullen rain was falling through the windless air, as the gentlemen left the House and dispersed among the excited crowd to their dwellings. Along the river the people were dense, they surged and gathered along the banks from Westminster to St. Katherine's wharf, shouting, singing, flinging up their hats, and wringing each other's hands for joy.
They had just been regaled with a sight many of them had never dared to hope to see. The mist and the rain had not obscured from their hungry eyes the barge in which my Lord Strafford, that morning the greatest subject in two kingdoms, had gone by, a prisoner, to the Tower.
He stood for an absolute monarchy, a dominant priesthood, taxation without law, the Star Chamber, the Court of High Commission, even as the Queen stood for Papistry and the possible employment of foreign force, and the two between them represented all that was most hateful to the English.
Therefore it was neither the usual levity of crowds nor the usual vulgar rejoicing in fallen greatness that animated these dense throngs of Londoners, but a deep, almost awful sense that a definite and tremendous struggle had begun between King and people, and had begun with a great victory on the popular side.
It had been a day of smouldering excitement thatfrequently burst into riotings between Westminster and Whitehall. In the morning my lord, with a guard of halberdiers, had gone down as usual to the House; after a little while he had returned to the palace, accompanied each time by the furious shouting and groans of the people. The truth was that his charges against Pym were not yet ready, and he wished to consult his master.
The crowd, however, waited, fed by rumours that came from time to time by means of those who had the entry into the House; by the afternoon it was definitely known that Mr. Pym had cleared the Lobby and locked the door of the House, while a discussion of grave importance took place.
So the people waited, patient but insistent, trusting Mr. Pym and those gentlemen shut up with him, yet watchful lest they should cheat them.
Nor were they disappointed; at five o'clock out came Mr. Pym at the head of some three hundred Members, and, passing through the frantically applauding crowd, went to the House of Lords.
Here, at the Bar, he told the Peers, that by the command of the Commons in Parliament and in the name of all the Commons of England, he accused the Earl of Strafford of high treason, and demanded that he be put in custody while they produced the grounds of their accusation.
Then came my lord again, hastening back from Whitehall (where the news had reached him), with an assured and proud demeanour, and so into the House, with a gloomy and unseeing countenance for the hostile throng; then more suspense, while excitement increased to a point where it could not be any longer contained, and vented itself in fierce rattlings on the very doorsteps of Westminster Hall and rebellious tumults at the very gates of Whitehall, where the guards were doubled and stood with drawn swords, for there had been some ugly shouting of the Queen's name, and some hoarse demand that John Pym should accuse her also of high treason against the realm of England,and haul her forth with her black Papist brood of priests to answer the charges against her, even as my lord was answering, or must answer them. Before the misty evening was far advanced, and while the moon hung yet sickly pale in a scarcely dark sky, the prologue to this tragedy was accomplished, and my lord left the House where he had so long ruled supreme, and was conveyed down the sullen tide to the Tower.
And when he had at last gone, and his guarded barge was absorbed into the shadows of the Traitor's Gate, a kind of awe and silence fell over London. The great minister, the King's favourite, the man who was both his master's brain and conscience, had fallen so swiftly, so irrecoverably, as London knew in her heart, that there was almost a terror mingled with the triumph; for all knew that Strafford was not one like Somerset or Buckingham, but a man of the utmost capacity for courage, intelligence, and all the arts of government.
The Commons of Parliament, who had done this thing, scattered, weary and quiet, to their various homes and lodgings, and Mr. Cromwell and Mr. Hampden walked through the falling rain, communing with their hearts.
As they neared the palace which stood brilliant with flambeaux lights flashing on the drawn swords at the gates, Mr. Hampden turned his gentle face towards his companion and said, "What will the King do?"
"The King?" repeated Mr. Cromwell, lifting earnest eyes to the silent palace. "I would I could come face to face with the King—surely he is a man who might be persuaded of the truth of things if he were not so surrounded by frivolous, wrong, and wanton counsellors."
"I believe," answered John Hampden, "that His Majesty rooteth his pretences so firmly in Divine Right—(being besides upheld in this by all the clergy), that he would consider it blasphemy to abate one jot of his claims. See this pass we are come to, Mr. Cromwell; we deal with a man with whom no compromise is possible—ask Mr.Pym, who tried to serve him—he will excuse himself, he will shift and turn, but he will never give way, and when he is most quiet he will always break his tranquillity with some monstrous imprudence, as this late forcing of the Archbishop's prayer book on the Scots, thereby provoking a peaceable nation into rebellion."
Mr. Cromwell turned up the collar of his cloak, for the cold dampness of the night was increasing, and he was liable to rheumatism. He made no answer, and Mr. Hampden, glancing expectantly at his thoughtful face, repeated his query—
"What will the King do now?"
"What can he do?" replied the Member for Cambridge. "Strafford falleth through serving him, and likely enough came to London on promise of the King's protection. The King will stand by Strafford."
"Then it will remain to be seen which is the stronger—Parliament or His Majesty," said John Hampden, and he sighed as if he foresaw ahead a long and bitter struggle. "I tell thee this," he added, with an earnestness almost sad, "that if the people are disappointed of justice on my lord, the King is not safe in his own capital, nor yet the Queen. Thou hast observed, Mr. Cromwell, how well hated the Queen is?"
"A Papist and a Frenchwoman," replied the other, "how could she hope for English loyalty? And she is meddling—of all things the English hate a meddling woman. Her ways might do well in France, but here we like them not. I am sorry for my Lady Strafford," he added irrelevantly, and with a strange note of tenderness in his rough voice. "What are all these issues to her? Yet she must suffer for them. I saw her yesterday, and she was as still for terror as a chased deer fallen spent of breath, and yet had the courage to move and speak with pride, poor gentlewoman!"
"We shall see many piteous things before England be tranquil," returned Mr. Hampden sadly. "Chief among them this discomfiture of patient women. The Lord support them."
They were now at Mr. Cromwell's door.
"Wilt thou come up, my cousin?" he asked, laying a detaining hand on the other's damp coat sleeve.
"This evening hold me excused," answered Mr. Hampden. "I have some country gentlemen at my entertainment, and I would not disappoint them."
So they parted as quietly as if this momentous day had held nothing of note, and Mr. Cromwell went up to his modest chamber and lit the candles and placed them on a writing-table which held a Bible among the quills and papers. He stood for a while thoughtfully; he had flung off his mantle and his hat, and his well-made, strong figure showed erect in a plain, rather ill-cut, suit of dark green cloth, his band and cuffs were of linen, and there was no single ornament nor an inch of lace about his whole attire; indeed, his lack of the ordinary elegancies of a gentleman's costume would have seemed to some an affectation, and to all a sure indication that he had now definitely joined the increasingly powerful Puritan party which had set itself to destroy every vestige of ornament in England—from Bishops to lace handkerchiefs, as their opponents sneeringly remarked. These enemies were not, perhaps, in a humour for sneering to-night when the chief of them lay straightened between prison walls. So thought Mr. Cromwell as he stood thoughtfully before the little table that bore the Bible, and looked down on the closed covers.
Above the table hung a mirror; the glass was old and cracked, and into the frame were stuck various papers which showed how the present possessor of the room disregarded the original use of the mirror. Sufficient of the glass, however, remained unobscured to reflect the head and shoulders of Oliver Cromwell, and this reflection, with the dark background and the blurred surface of the glass, was like a fine portrait, and by reason of the absolute consciousness of the man, like a portrait of his soul as well as of his features.
His expression was at once fierce and tender and deeplythoughtful; the brow, so carelessly shaded by the disordered brown hair, was free from any lines, the grey eyes seemed as if they looked curiously into the future, the lips were lightly set together, and seemed as if they might at any minute quiver into speech, the line of his jaw and cheek had a look of serene fierceness, like the noble idea of strength given by the jaw of a lion.
So he looked, reflected in the old mirror and lit by the two common candles, and if one had suddenly glanced over his shoulder into the glass and seen that face, they would have thought they looked at a painting of abstract qualities, not at a compound human being, at this moment so utterly was his rugged look of strength and fortitude spiritualized by the radiance of the soul within.
Outside the rain fell and there was no sound but the drip of the drops on the sill; the great city was silent after the tumult of the day, most people were eating, sleeping, going their ways as if there was no King humiliated utterly, raging in his chamber; no Queen weeping among her priests; no great man in prison writing to his wife: "Hold up your heart, look to the children and your house, and at last, by God's good pleasure, we shall have our deliverance"; no quiet gentleman from Huntingdon standing in a quiet room and meditating things that would change this city and this land as it had not been changed since it bore the yoke of kingship.
To the many, even to Mr. Pym and Mr. Hampden, the fall of Strafford might seem a tremendous thing, a shrewd blow against tyranny and a daring act, but to this younger man, with his deeper, more mystical, religious fervour, his practical and immeasurable courage, the sweeping aside of the King's favourite was but the first of many acts that would utterly alter the face of England.
Strafford might have gone, but there were other things to go—Papistry, the Star Chamber, ship money, and other civil wrongs, bishops, prayer books, church ornaments and choirs, and other pollutions of the pure faith of Christ, andthere was a burning, blazing ideal to be followed—the ideal of what might be made of England in moral worth, in civic liberty, in that domestic dignity and foreign power that had made the reign of Elizabeth Tudor splendid throughout the world.
This might be done; but how was a poor country gentleman, untrained in diplomacy or war, to accomplish it?
How dare he presume that he was meant to accomplish it?
He moved from the table abruptly and, going to the window, rested his head against the frame and stared through the soiled panes into the dark street where the lights glimmered sparsely at long intervals in the heavy winter air.
He recalled and clung to the memory of the vision that he had had in the old barn outside St. Ives; the certainty that he was in covenant with the Lord to do the Lord's work in England had pierced his soul with the same sharpness as a dagger might pierce the flesh. At times the remembered glamour faded, weariness, misgivings, would cloud the glorious conviction—yet deep-rooted in his noble spirit it remained. God had spoken to him and he was to do God's works,—but the practical humanity in him, the strong English sense and sound judgment demanded—how?
He was of full middle age and unaccomplished in anything save farming and such knowledge of the law as less than a year's training could give him. His education had been the usual education of a gentleman, but he had less learning than most, for his college days had been short, owing to the death of his father and the sudden call to responsibilities, and he had absolutely no love for any of the arts and sciences. How then was he equipped to combat the immense powers arrayed against him—the King, the Church, immemorial tradition, custom, usage, the weight of aristocracy, the example of Europe—for his design, though yet vague, was to create in England a constitution for Church and State for which he could see no pattern anywhere within the world.
He felt no greatness in himself, he was even doubtful of his own capacity. Though he was already much hearkened to, principally, he thought, by reason of his connexion with Hampden and the vast number of relations he had in the House, still, on the few occasions when he had spoken in public, as when he had taken up the cause of the Fen people in the late question of the drainage scheme, his ardour and impetuosity had gone far to spoil his cause, and he was well behind, in political weight and party influence, such men as Pym and Hampden and even Falkland and Hyde, Holles and Haselrig, Culpeper and Strode.
Yet with trumpet rhythm there beat on his brain—"Something to do and I to do it! Work to be done and I to accomplish it! Something to be gained and I to gain it! The Lord's battles to be fought and I to fight them!"
He moved from the window; the room was cold and the candles burnt with a tranquil frosty light. Mr. Cromwell went to the great book lying between the two plain brass sticks, the only book he ever read, the book in which, to him, was comprised the whole of life and all we know of the earth, of hell, of heaven.
He opened the Bible at random; the thick leaves fell back at the psalms, and his passionate grey eyes fell on a sentence that he read aloud with a deep note of triumph in his heavy masculine voice—
"O help us against the enemy; for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do great acts: and it is he that shall tread down our enemies."
"Through ...God" repeated Mr. Cromwell, "we ... shall do ...greatacts."
He put his hand to the plain little sword at his side, that had hitherto been of no use save to give evidence of his gentility on market days at Huntingdon and Ely.... "Greatacts," he repeated again.
As he stood so, his right hand crossed to his sword, his left resting on the open Bible, his chin sunk on to his breastand his whole face softened and veiled with thought, he was not conscious of the humble room, the patter of the rain, the two coarse candles poorly dispelling the darkness. He was only aware of a sudden access of power, a revival of the burning sensation that had come to him in the old barn perfumed with hay at St. Ives.
His doubts and confusions, misgivings and fears, vanished, this inner conviction and power seemed sufficient to combat all the foes concealed in the quiet city—all, even to the King himself....
He went to his knees as swiftly as if smitten into that attitude.
"Through God," he whispered, "we shall dogreatacts."
He hid his strong face in his strong hands and prayed.
November had turned to May and my Lord Strafford's public agony was over; he lay in the Tower a condemned man.
For seventeen days had he, in this most momentous trial of his, defended himself, unaided, against thirteen accusers who relieved each other, and with such skill that his impeachment was like to have miscarried; but the Commons were not so to be baulked.
They dare not let Strafford escape them; they feared an Irish army, a French army, they feared the desperate King would dissolve them, they feared another gunpowder plot, and twice, on a cracking of the floor, fled their Chamber. All fears, all anxieties, all animosities were at their sharpest edge; the crowds in the streets demanded the blood of Strafford, and did not pause to add that if they were disappointed they would not hesitate to satisfy themselves with more exalted victims.
A Bill of attainder against my lord was brought forward and hurried through Parliament. Pym and Hampden opposed it, but popular fear and popular rage were stronger than they, and there was no hope for Strafford save in the master whom he was condemned for serving. He wrote to the King, urging him to pass the Bill for the sake of England's peace.
London became more and more exasperated; rumours flew thick: The King's son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, was coming with an army; money was being sent from theFrench King; the Irish, that ancient nightmare, were to be let loose; the Queen had raised a troop to attack the Keys of the Kingdom and set my lord free by force from the Tower.
The Bill was passed, and on a May morning sent up for the King's assent.
He had, a week before, sent a message to the Lords, beseeching them not to press upon his conscience on which he could not condemn his minister.
But the appeal had failed; Lords, Commons, and people all waited eagerly, angrily, threateningly, for the King's assent.
He asked a day to consider; he sent for three bishops and, in great agony of mind, asked their ghostly counsel. Usher and Juxon told him Strafford was innocent and that he should not sign. Williams bid him bow to the opinion of the judges, and bade him listen to the thunderous tumult at his gates. London was roused, he said, and would not be pacified until my lord's head fell on Tower Hill.
So the hideous day wore on to evening, and the King had not signed.
As the delay continued, the suspense and agitation in the city become almost unbearable, and it took all the efforts of the royal guards to hold the gates of the Palace.
The King was locked into his private cabinet, and even the Queen had not seen him since noon.
Henriette Marie had passed the earlier part of the day with her younger children. She had made several vain attempts to see the King and she had denied herself to all, even to Lady Strafford and her frantic supplications.
She had many agents continually employed, and during the day they came to her and reported upon the feeling in the Houses, in the city, and in the streets.
She saw, from these advices, that the King's situation was little better than desperate. She saw another thing—there was not, at that moment, sufficient force available in the capital to control the multitude. They were, in fact, at the mercy of the populace.
When the haze of spring twilight began to fall over the stocks and lilies, violets and pinks in the gardens sloping to the river, still flashing in the sinking sun, and the first breaths of evening were wafted through the open windows of the Palace, delicious with the perfume of these beds of sweets, the Queen went herself and alone to the cabinet where the King kept his anguished vigil.
For a while he would not open, even to the sound of her voice, but after she had waited there a little, like a supplicant, she heard his step, the key was turned, and he admitted her. She entered swiftly and flung herself at his feet, as she had done at their first meeting nearly twenty years ago, when he had lifted her young loveliness to his heart, there to for ever remain.
Now she was a worn woman, her beauty prematurely obscured by distresses, and he was far different from the radiant cavalier who had welcomed her to England, but the fire of love lit then in the heart of each had not abated; even now, in the midst of his misery of mind, he raised her up as tenderly, as reverently, as when she had first come to him.
"Mary," he said brokenly, "Mary."
He kissed her cold cheek as he drew her to his shoulder, and she felt his tears.
But her mood was not one of weeping; her frail figure, her delicate features, were alert and quivering with energy; her large vivid eyes glanced eagerly round the room. On the King's private black and gold Chinese bureau lay the warrant for my Lord Strafford's execution. So hasty and resolved was the Parliament, also, perhaps, so confident of their power to force the King's assent, that the warrant had been sent before the royal consent had been given to the Bill.
The Queen drew herself away from Charles and rested her glance on him. She wore a white gown enriched withsilver damask flowers, her face, too, was colourless save for a feverish flush under her eyes, and the long-admired black locks hung neglected and disarranged over her deep lace collar. She was a sorrowful and reproachful figure as she stood regarding him so intently.
The King's white sick face, too, wore a look of utter suffering, in his narrowed eyes was a bitterness beyond sorrow.
"Sire," said the Queen in a formal tone, "you shut yourself up here when it would more befit you to come forth and face what must be faced." She set her teeth, "The people are at the very gates."
Charles took a step back against the heavy brocaded hangings of the wall.
"I will not sign—no—I will not assent," he muttered.
"Will not? Will not?" cried the Queen. "Charles, thou hast no choice."
"Dost thou advise me to do this infamous thing?" answered the King in a terrible voice. "He is my friend, his peril is through serving me; and he trusts me, relies on me—that is enough. Even as you came I had resolved that, not even to save my sacred Crown, would I abandon Strafford."
"And what of me and my children?" asked the Queen, in a still voice; "do we come after thy servant? Is thy love for me grown so halting that I come last?"
The King winced.
"Who would touch thee?" he murmured.
"Even those who, now outside this very palace, cry insults against the Papist and the Frenchwoman. Charles, I tell thee this is playing on the edge of a revolution—are we all to go to ruin for Strafford's sake?"
"He went to ruin for mine," replied the King.
"He failed," said the Queen, "and he pays. When we fail, we too will pay. But this is not our time. The people demand Strafford, and we will not risk our Crowns and lives by refusing this demand."
"He trusts me," repeated Charles, "and I do love him. He served me well, he was loyal ... our God help me!... my friend——"
He turned away to hide the uncontrollable tears, and, opening a drawer in the little Chinese cabinet, fumbled blindly among some papers and pulled out a letter.
"This is what he wrote me," he faltered. "I have never had one like him in my service.... Mary ... I cannot let him die."
He sank into a chair and, resting his elbow on the arm of it, dropped his face into his hand; the other held the letter of my lord written from the Tower.
The Queen had read this epistle; at the time it had moved her, but now that sensation of generous pity was dried up in the fierce desire to save her husband and herself from all the ruin a revolution threatened. She went up to the King and took the letter from his inert fingers, and, glancing over it, read aloud a passage—
"'Sir, my consent shall more acquit you herein to God, than all the world can do besides. To a willing man there is no injury done; and as by God's grace I forgive all the world with calmness and meekness of infinite contentment to my dislodging soul, so, sir, to you I can give the life of this world with all the cheerfulness imaginable, in the just acknowledgment of your exceeding favours.'—
"Hear!" added the Queen breathlessly, "the man himself does not ask nor expect this sacrifice of you——"
Charles interrupted.
"Because he is magnanimous, shall I be a slavish coward?"
"He is willing to die," urged the Queen; "he is pleased to give his life for you——"
"Willing to die? Where is there a man willing to die? There is none to be found, however old, wretched, or mean. Deceive not thyself, Strafford is young, strong, full of joy and life—he hath a wife and children and others dear to him—is it like that he iswillingto die?"
The Queen's eyes did not sink before the miserable reproach in her husband's gaze.
"Willing or no, hemustdie," she said firmly. "He must go. Stand not in the way of his fate."
"He shall not die through me," said Charles, with a bitter doggedness. "Am I never to sleep sound again for thinking of how I abandoned this man? He came to London, Mary, on our promise of protection."
"We have done what we could," returned Henriette Marie, unmoved, "and now we can do no more."
"I will not," said the King, as if repeating the words gave him strength. "I will not. Do they want everything I love—first Buckingham—now Strafford——"
"Then me," flashed the Queen. "Think of that, if you think of your wife at all."
This reproach was so undeserved as to be grotesque. In all the King's concerns, from the most important to the most foolish, she had always come foremost, and this was the first occasion on which he had not absolutely thrown himself on her judgment and bowed to her desires.
Some such reflection must have crossed his tortured mind.
"You always disliked Strafford," was all he said.
"No," said the Queen vehemently, as if she disclaimed some shameful thing. "No, never, and I would have saved him. Do not take me to be so mean and creeping a creature as to counsel you pass this Bill because I hate my lord."
She was justified in her defence; she had been jealous of the powerful minister, and she had never personally liked him, but it was not for vengeance or malice that she urged the King to abandon Strafford, but because she was afraid of that power which asked for his death, and because her tyrannical royal pride detested the thought that she and hers should be in an instant's danger for the sake of a subject. And when she saw her husband, for the first time since their marriage, so absorbed in anguished thought as to be scarcely aware of her presence, as to be forgetfulof her and her children, she felt jealous of this other influence that seemed to defy hers, and a fierceness that was akin to cruelty touched her desperation.
"Who is this man that I should be endangered for his sake?" she cried, after she had in vain waited for the King to break his dismal silence.
"He is my friend," muttered Charles.
"Save him then, or share his fate," returned his wife bitterly. "As for me, I will go to my own country, and there find the protection that you cannot give me."
Charles sprang up and faced her.
"Mary, what is this? What do you speak of?" he cried in a distracted voice, and holding out to her his irresolute hands.
The Queen took advantage of this sudden weakening of his silent defences; her whole manner changed. She went up to him softly, took his hands in hers, and, raising to him a face pale and pleading, broke out into eager and humble entreaties.
"My Charles, let him go—let us be happy again—do not, for this scruple, risk everything! My dear, give way—it must be—we are in danger—oh, listen to me!"
He stared at her with eyes clouded with suffering.
"Couldst thou but put this eloquence on the other side I might be a happier man," he said. "Strengthen my conscience, do not weaken it."
His tone was as pleading as hers had been, but she perceived that he was still obdurate on the main part of her entreaty, and she slipped from his clasp and knelt at his feet in a genuine passion of tears.
"You have had the last of me!" she sobbed. "I will not stay where neither my dignity nor my life is safe. Keep Strafford and let me go!"
The King turned away with feeble and unsteady steps, and going to the window pulled aside the olive velvet curtains.
The twilight had fallen and the sky was pale to colourlessness; low on the horizon, beyond the river, sombre banks of clouds were rising, and at the edge of them, floating free in the purity of the sky, was the evening star, sparkling with the frosty light of Northern climes.
The King fixed his eyes on this star, but without hope of comfort; cold and disdainful seemed star and heavens, and God pitiless and very far away behind the storm-clouds.
There was no command, no excuse, no reproof for him from on High; in his own heart the decision must be and now—at once—within the next hour. At that moment life seemed unutterably hateful to the King; everything in the world, even the figure of his wife, he viewed with a touch of sick disgust; the taint of what he was about to do was already over him, his life was already stained with baseness, his happiness corrupted.
He knew, as he stared at the icy star that was already being veiled by the on-rushing vapours of the rain-cloud, that he would abandon Strafford.
Though he knew that it would be better to be that man in the Tower, against whose ardent life the decree had gone forth, than himself in his palace, secure by the sacrifice of that faithful servant; though he knew that in the bloody grave of his betrayed friend would be entombed for ever his own tranquillity and peace of mind, yet he also knew that it was not in him to stand firm against those inexorable ones who demanded Strafford, against the tears and reproaches of his wife, against his own inner fears and weaknesses which whispered to him dread and terror of these hateful Parliament men and of this mutinous city of London.
In his heart he had always known that he would fail Strafford if it ever came to a sharp issue, yea, he had known it when he urged his minister to come from York, and that made this moment the more awful, that his secret weakness, which he had never admitted to himself, was forced into life.
He would forsake Strafford to buy the safety of hisCrown, his family, his person, and Strafford would forgive him (he could picture the look of incredulous pity on the condemned man's dark face when the sentence was read to him), and the Parliament would scorn him.
Through the entanglement of his bitter and humiliating reflections, he became aware of the sound of the persistent, low sobbing of the Queen in the darkening room behind him, and he turned, letting the curtains fall together over the fading heavens, the brightening star, the oncoming storm.
The scanty light that now filled the chamber was only enough to let him discern the white blur of his wife's figure as she knelt before one of the brocade chairs with her dark head lost in the shadows and her hands upraised in a startling position of prayer.
Her sobs, even and continuous as the breaths of a peaceful sleeper, filled the rich chamber, the splendours of which were now gloomed over with shadow, with sorrow.
Presently, as he watched her, and as he listened, the grim sharpness of his anguish was melted into a weak grief at her distress; his impotency to protect her from tears became his main torment.
"Mary," he said, "Mary—it is over—think no more of it—go to bed and sleep in peace. London shall be content to-night."
He stumbled towards her, and she rose up swiftly and straightly, holding her rag of wet white handkerchief to her wet white face.
"Ah, Charles!" she exclaimed, her voice thick from her weeping.
She held out her arms, he took her to his heart and bowed his shamed head on her shoulder; but after a very little while he put her away.
"Leave me now!"
"This thing must be done at once—to-night—I cannot tell how long they can hold the gates——"
"I must go out," said Charles, with utmost weariness; "get me a light, my dear, my beloved."
She found the flint and tinder and, with deftness and expedition, lit the lamp of crystal and silver gilt which stood on the King's private bureau.
As the soft, gracious flame illumined the room, the King, who was leaning against the tapestry like a sick man, looked at once towards the fatal paper and beside it the pen and ink dish ready.
The Queen stood waiting; her face was all blotted and swollen with weeping; she looked a frail and piteous figure; her youth seemed suddenly in one day dead, and her beauty already a thing of yesterday.
"It is well I love thee," said Charles, "otherwise what I do would make hell for me. Oh, if I hadnotloved thee, never, never would I have done this thing!"
"We shall forget it," answered the Queen, "and we shall live," she added, straining her hoarse voice to a note of passion, "to avenge ourselves."
She spoke to a man of a nature absolutely unforgiving, and at this moment her mention of vengeance came like comfort to his anguish and palliation of his baseness.
"I will never forget, I will never pardon," he swore, lifting up his hand towards heaven. "Never, never shall there be peace between me and Parliament until this shame is covered over with blood."
He snatched up the warrant with trembling hand.
"Send some lords to me," he cried. "I cannot sign this myself—get it done—bring this most hateful day to an end!"
He sank into the chair on which her tears had fallen, and stared at the paper clutched in his fingers as if it was a sight of horror.
Henriette Marie hastened away to tell the waiting deputies of the Houses that the King would pass the Bill, and as she went she heard a cry intense enough to have carried to the Tower where my lord sat waiting the news of his fate.
"Oh, Strafford! Strafford! my friend!"
"Things go too far and too fast for me, and though men speak of the progress we make, to me it seemeth more like a progress into calamities unspeakable."
The young man who spoke leant against the dark-blue and gold diapered wall of the antechamber to the House of Commons, in Westminster Hall; members and their friends were passing to and fro; in a few days the memorable and triumphant session would adjourn. The King was in Scotland, employed, as the Parliament well knew, in one of his innumerable intrigues, this time an endeavour to bring a Northern army into London. The Scots, since the imperfect peace he had patched with them, remained his chief hope. Mr. Hampden was in Edinburgh watching him, but Mr. Pym remained in London, the mainspring of the popular party.
It was late August of the year my Lord Strafford ("putting off my doublet as cheerfully now as I ever did when I went to my bed," he had said), had walked to his death on Tower Hill. Archbishop Laud was a prisoner, and the King had given his consent to a series of Acts which swept away those grievances which the people had complained of, and, most momentous of all, he had passed a law by which it was impossible for him to dissolve Parliament without its own consent.
Therefore it might seem that affairs had never been so bright and hopeful for the leaders of the reforming party, and yet this young gentleman, leaning against the wall andstaring at the pool of sunlight the Gothic window cast at his feet, spoke in a tone of melancholy and foreboding.
He had always been a close follower and friend of Pym and Hampden, and always ardent for the public good—one of the keen, swift spirits whose direct courage had helped the House to triumph, but now he stood dejected and rather in the attitude of one who has suffered defeat.
His companion, who was but a few years older, regarded him with a thoughtful air, then glanced dubiously at the crowds which filled the chamber and from which they, in the corner by the window, stood a little apart.
"I take your meaning," he replied, after a considerable pause. "I see a bigger cleavage between King and people than I, for one, ever meant there to be, and prospects of a division in this nation which will be a long while healing."
He bent his gaze on the other side of the chamber where Mr. Pym and Mr. Cromwell were talking loudly and at great length together.
If any casual observer had looked in at this assembly, assuredly it would have been this man by the window at whom they would have glanced longest and oftenest.
His appearance would have been noticeable in any gathering, for it was one of the most unusual beauty and charm.
He was no more than thirty years of age, and the delicate smoothness of his countenance was such as belongs to even earlier years, and gave him, indeed, an air of almost feminine refinement and gentleness; his long love-locks were pale brown, his heavy-lidded eyes of a soft and changeable grey, and the expression of his lips, set firmly under the slight shade of the fashionable moustaches, was one of great sweetness.
The whole expression of his face was a tenderness and purity seldom seen in masculine traits; yet in no way did he appear weak, and his bearing showed energy and resolution.
His dress, of an olive green, was carefully enriched with rough gold embroidery, and his linen, laces, and other appointments were of a finer quality than those worn by the other gentlemen there.
Such was Lucius Carey, my Lord Viscount Falkland, one of the noblest, in degree and soul, of those who had combined to curb and confine the tyranny of the King.
His companion was Mr. Edward Hyde, an ordinary looking blonde gentleman, inclined to stoutness, and a prominent member of the more moderate section of the dominant Commons.
He followed the direction of the Viscount's gaze and remarked, in a low tone—
"Those two are getting matters very much into their own hands, and Mr. Cromwell, at least, is too extreme."
"What more do they want?" asked my Lord Falkland. "The King hath redressed the grievances we laboured under. They strained the very utmost of the law (nay, more than the law) on the Earl of Strafford, and to push matters further smacks of disloyalty to His Majesty."
"My Lord," answered Mr. Hyde firmly, "reformers are ever apt to run a headlong course, and some excesses must be excused those who have so laboured at the general good——"
"Excesses?" answered my lord, flushing a little. "I am still an Anglican, by the grace of God, and when I see altars dragged from their places, rood screens smashed, all pictures, images, and carvings destroyed in our churches until God's houses look as if they were the poor remnants of a besieged city,—when I know that this is by order of Parliament, then methinks it seemeth as if violence had taken the place of zeal."
"Neither do these things please me," answered Mr. Hyde, "but the dams are broken and there are swift tides running in all directions. And who is to stem them?"
"Or who," asked my lord sadly, "to guide them into proper channels? Not your 'root and branch men,' whowould sweep every bishop and every prayer book out of the land. Not by such intolerance or bigotry, Mr. Hyde, are we to gain peace and liberty."
"Moderate counsels," returned the other, "own but a weak voice in these bitter savoured times. It is such as this Oliver Cromwell, with their loud rude speech, who are hearkened to."
"I only half like this noisy Mr. Cromwell," said my lord. "He hath sprung very suddenly into notice, and seemeth to have, on an instant, gained much authority with Mr. Pym and Mr. Hampden."
At this moment the object of their speech turned his head and looked at them as if he had heard his own name. Lord Falkland smiled at him and made a little gesture of beckoning.
Mr. Cromwell instantly left his friends and came over to the window, where he stood in the gold flush of sunshine and looked keenly at the two young aristocrats.
"More plots, eh," he asked pleasantly.
"More talk only, sir," smiled the Viscount.
Mr. Cromwell laid his heavy muscular hand on my lord's arm.
"Thou art worthy," he remarked; "but what shall I say of thee?" his narrowed grey eyes rested on Mr. Hyde's florid face. "Thou art he who bloweth neither hot nor cold."
"I am like to blow hot enough, I think," returned Mr. Hyde, "unless thou blow more cold."
"Wherein have I vexed thee?" asked Oliver Cromwell, with a pleasantness that might have covered contempt.
"Your party is too extreme, sir," said the Viscount earnestly. "You press too hard upon the weakness of His Majesty. What we set out to gain hath been gained and safeguarded by law. You should now go moderately, and, from what I know of your councils, you do not propose moderation."
Mr. Cromwell's face hardened into heavy, almost lowering, lines.
"So you, too, slacken!" he exclaimed. "You would join those who rise up against us! Fie, my lord, I had better hopes."
"Mr. Cromwell," returned the Viscount, "we have been long together on the same road; but if your mind is what I do think it to be, then here we come to a parting, and many Christian gentlemen will follow my way."
Oliver Cromwell regarded him with intense keenness.
"What do you think my mind to be?" he demanded.
"I think you rush forward to utterly destroy the Anglican Church and to so limit the King's authority that he is no more than a show piece in the realm."
"Maybe that and maybe more than that," returned Mr. Cromwell. "Even as the Lord directeth: 'He shall send down from on high to fetch me and shall take me out of many waters.' I stand here, a poor instrument, waiting His will."
This answer bore the fervent and ambiguous character that Lord Falkland had noticed in this gentleman's speeches, and which might be due either to enthusiasm or guile, and which was, at least, difficult to answer.
"You run too much against the King," said Mr. Hyde, "and against the Church of England. Our aim was to clear her of abuses, not to destroy her."
"Our aim, Mr. Hyde?" interrupted the Member for Cambridge keenly. "Were our aims ever the same, from the very first? I saw one thing, you another; but trouble me not now with this vain discourse," he added, with a note of great strength in his hoarse voice, "when I know you are in communication with His Majesty and but seek an opportunity to leave us."
Edward Hyde flushed, but answered at once and with pride.
"I make no secret of it that, if the Parliament forget all duty to the King, I shall not."
"Are you afraid?" asked Mr. Cromwell, with more sadness than contempt. "Or do you look for promotion andhonours from His Majesty? There is no satisfaction in such glory, 'but hope thou in the Lord and He shall promote thee, that thou shall possess the land; when the ungodly shall perish, thou shalt see it.'"
"You do us wrong!" exclaimed Lord Falkland. "We hold to loyalty; we think of that and not of base rewards."
"Loyalty!" exclaimed Mr. Cromwell vehemently. "We own loyalty to One higher than the King, yet what saith St. Paul: 'See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is.' Therefore we go not definitely against His Majesty, but rather wait, hoping still for peaceable issues and fair days, yet abating nothing of our just demands nor of our high hopes."
"Go your ways as you see them set clear before you," returned the Viscount; "but as for me, all is confusion and I have begun to ponder many things."
"'A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways,'" said the Puritan firmly, "and such can be of no use to us. Go serve the King and take ten thousand with you, and still we stand the stronger."
Mr. Hyde's personal dislike of the speaker, as well as his loyalty and conservative principles, spurred him into a hot answer.
"Do you then admit you do not serve the King?" he asked. "Are we to hear open rebellion?"
"God knoweth what we shall hear and what we shall see," said Mr. Cromwell grimly. "There will be more wonders abroad than thy wits will be able to cope with, methinks, Mr. Hyde."
"My wits stand firm," smiled that gentleman, "and my faith is uncorrupt and my sword is practised."
"The sword!" repeated Oliver Cromwell, putting his hand slowly on the plain little weapon by his side. "Speak not of the sword! Englishmen have not, sir, come to that, and will not, unless they be forced."
"Yet," said Lord Falkland quietly, "do you not perceive that by your actions you provoke the possibilities of bloodshed? Already the Lords have fallen away from you—the King hath many friends even among the Commons, and they are not less resolute, less courageous, less convinced of the justice of their desires than you yourself—how then are these divided parties to be brought together unless a temperate action and a mild counsel be employed? The King hath held his hand—sir, hold yours."
With these words, which he uttered in a stately fashion and almost in the tone of a warning, the young lord, taking Mr. Hyde by the arm, was turning away, but Oliver Cromwell, with an earnest gesture, caught his hand.
"Lucius Carey, stay thou with us," he said.
Lord Falkland let his slight hand remain in the Puritan's powerful grasp, and turned his serene, mournful eyes on to the older man's stern, eloquent face.
"Mr. Cromwell," he replied, "believe me honest as yourself. You left plenty and comfort for this toilsome business of Parliament, and I also put some ease by that I might do a little service here. My cause is your cause, the cause of liberty. I despise the courtier and hate the tyrant, but I believe in the old creeds, too, Mr. Cromwell, and that the King is as like to save us as any other gentleman. Therefore, if henceforth you see little of me, believe that I obey my conscience as you do follow yours."