Mrs. Griffiths now woke from her stupor of dismay and rushed from one body to another as they lay yet warm at her feet.
And when she found that they who had lately been speaking to her were hideously dead, and her hands all blooded with the touching of them, she turned and cursed the soldiery in her agony.
"Silence! thou railing woman!" one of them cried.
She seized one of the empty pistols from the window-seat and struck at the man.
"God's Mother avenge us!" she shrieked.
The fellow, still in the heat of slaughter, hurled her down.
"Spawn of the scarlet woman!" he exclaimed.
She got up to her knees, her head-dress fallen and her face deformed.
"Thrice damned heretic!" she said. "Thou shalt be thrust into the deepest pit——"
"Stop her mouth!" cried another, coming up; he gave her an ugly name, and hit her with his arquebus.
She fell down again, but continued her reproaches and railing, till they made an end, one firing a pistol at her at close range, the ball thereof mercifully killing her, so that she lay prone with her two companions.
After this the soldiers joined Major Harrison, whom they found with Lieutenant-General Cromwell at the end of this noble suite of apartments, having there at last brought to bay the indomitable lord of this famous and wealthy mansion, the puissant prince, John Pawlet, Marquess of Winchester.
The place where this gentleman faced his enemies was the chapel of his faith, pompous and glorious with every circumstance of art and wealth.
Windows of jewel-like glass transmitted the October sunshine in floods of softly coloured light; the walls were of Italian marble, curiously inlaid; on the altar blazed, in full pride, an image of the Virgin, the height of a man and crowned with gems; a silk carpet covered the altar steps, and cushions of velvet were scattered over the mosaic floor.
In front of the altar lay a dead priest; the violet glow from the east window stained his old shrunken features, and beside him on the topmost step stood the Marquess; above the altar and the Virgin hung a beautiful picture brought from Italy at great expense by my lord, and showing a saint singing between some others—all most richly done; and this and the statue was the background for my lord.
He had his sword in his hand—a French rapier—water-waved in gold—and he wore a buff coat embroidered insilk and silver, and Spanish breeches with a fringe, and soft boots, but no manner of armour. He was bareheaded; his hair, carefully trained into curls after the manner of the Court, framed a face white as a wall; one lock fell, in the fashion so abhorred by the Puritans, longer than the rest over his breast, and was tied with a small gold ribbon.
"Truly," said Major Harrison exultingly, "the Lord of Israel hath given strength and power to His people! 'As for the transgressors, they shall perish together; and the end of the ungodly is, they shall be rooted out at the last!'"
Then Lieutenant Cromwell demanded my lord's sword.
"The King did give me this blade, and to him alone will I return it," replied the Marquess.
"Proud man!" cried Cromwell. "Dost thou still vaunt thyself when God hath delivered thee, by His great mercy, into our hands?"
He turned to the soldiers.
"Take this malignant prisoner and cast down these idolatrous shows and images—for what told I ye this morning? 'They that make them are like unto them, so is every one whotrusteth in them'—the which saying is now accomplished."
When the Marquess saw the soldiers advancing upon him, he broke his light, small sword across his knee and cast it down beside the dead priest.
"Though my faith and my sword lie low," he said, "yet in a better day they will arise."
"Cherish not vain hopes, Papist," cried Harrison, "but recant thine errors that have led thee to this disaster."
At this, Mr. Hugh Peters, the teacher, who had newly entered the chapel, spoke.
"Dost thou still so flourish? When the Lord hath been pleased in a few hours to show thee what mortal seed earthly glory groweth upon?—and how He, taking sinners in their own snares, lifteth up the heads of His despised people?"
The Marquess turned his back on Mr. Peters, and whenthe soldiers took hold of him and led him before the Lieutenant-General, he came unresisting, but in a silence more bitter than speech.
Cromwell spoke to him with a courtesy which seemed gentleness compared to the harshness of the others.
"My lord," he said, "for your obstinate adherence to a mistaken cause I must send you to London, a prisoner to the Parliament. God soften your heart and teach you the great peril your soul doth stand in."
Lord Winchester smiled at him in utter disdain, and turned his head away, still silent.
Now Colonel Pickering came in and told Cromwell that above three hundred prisoners had been taken, and that Basing was wholly theirs, including the Grange or farm where they had found sufficient provisions to last for a year or more and great store of ammunition and guns.
"The Lord grant," said the Lieutenant-General, "that these mercies be acknowledged with exceeding thankfulness."
And thereupon he gave orders for the chapel to be destroyed.
"And I will see it utterly slighted and cast down," he said, "even as Moses saw the golden calf cast down and broken."
The soldiers needed little encouragement, being already inflamed with zeal and the sight of the exceeding rich plunder, for never, since the war began, had they made booty of a place as splendid as Basing.
Major Harrison with his musket hurled over the image of the Virgin on the altar, and his followers made spoil of the golden vessels, the embroidered copes, stoles, and cloths, the cushions and carpets.
The altar-painting was ripped from end to end by a halbert, slashed across, and torn till it hung in a few ribbons of canvas; the gorgeous glass in the windows was smashed, the leading, as the only thing of value, dragged away, the marble carvings were chipped and broken, the mosaic walls defaced by blows from muskets and pikes.
After five minutes of this fury the chapel was a hideous havoc, and the Marquess could not restrain a passionate exclamation.
Cromwell turned to him.
"We destroy wood and stone and the articles of a licentious worship," he said, "but you have destroyed flesh and blood. To-day you shall see many popish books burnt—but at Smithfield it was human bodies."
The Marquess made no reply, nor would he look at the speaker, and they led him away through his desolated house.
Wild scenes of plunder were now taking place; clothes, hangings, plate, jewels were seized upon, the iron was being wrenched from the windows, the lead from the roof; what the soldiers could not remove they destroyed; one wing of the house was alight with fierce fire, and into these flames was flung all that savoured of Popery; from the Grange, wheat, bacon, cheese, beef, pork, and oatmeal were being carried away in huge quantities; amid all the din and confusion came the cries for quarter of some of the baser sort who had taken refuge in the cellars, and divers groans from those of the wounded who lay unnoticed under fallen rubbish and in obscure corners.
Cromwell gave orders to stop the fire as much as might be, for, he said, these chairs, stools, and this household stuff will sell for a good price.
The pay of his soldiers was greatly in arrears, and he was glad to have this pillage to give them.
"It will be," he remarked, "a good encouragement—for the labourer is worthy of his hire, and who goeth to warfare at his own cost?"
He and his officers, together with the Marquess and several other prisoners, now came (in the course of their leaving of the House) on the bedchamber of my lord, which caused the Puritans to gape with amaze, so rich beyond imaginings was this room, especially the bed, with great coverings of embroidered silk and velvet and amighty canopy bearing my lord's arms, all sparkling with bullion as was the tapestry on the walls.
Some soldiers were busy here, plundering my lord's clothes, and others were fighting over bags of silver, and the crown-pieces were scattered all over the silk rugs.
Then Mr. Peters, who had been arguing with my lord on his sinful idolatrous ways, pressed home his advantage and pointed to the disaster about him and asked the Marquess if he did not plainly see the hand of God was against him?
Lord Winchester, who had hitherto been silent, now broke out.
"If the King had had no more ground in England than Basing House, I would have adventured as I did and maintained it to the uttermost!"
"Art so stubborn," cried Mr. Peters, "when all is taken from thee?"
"Ay," said the Marquess, "Loyalty House this was called, and in that I take comfort, hoping His Majesty may have his day again. As for me, I have done what I could; and though this hour be as death, yet I would sooner be as I am than as thou art!"
And he said this with such sharp scorn and with an air so princely (as became his noble breeding) that Hugh Peters was for awhile silenced.
But Oliver Cromwell said, "Thou must say thy say at Westminster."
And so fell Basing in full pride.
Lieutenant-General Cromwell lay encamped outside Oxford; Chester had lately fallen, and Gloucester, and when the Parliamentarians took Oxford, as they must certainly soon take it, the King would have not a foot of ground left in England.
The King was in Oxford; he had gone from Newark to Wales, he had wandered awhile with such scattered forces as were left him with Rupert and Maurice, and then he had returned once more to the faithful, loyal city that might continue to be both faithful and loyal, but could not much longer resist the enemy that was ever pressing closer round her grey walls.
It was April. "We must end the war this year," Cromwell said. The people expected a peace and a settlement from the Parliament; the only question now in the minds of the leaders was, what peace and settlement would the King make, and keep, now he was fairly beaten?
This question was foremost night and day in the mind of General Cromwell.
This day, towards the end of April, he sat in his tent outside the beleaguered city, smoking a pipeful of Virginian tobacco and gazing out at the spring landscape and the near encampment of the Parliamentarian army, which was illumined by the dubious light of a misty moon.
Two companions were with him—Henry Ireton, who was to wed Bridget Cromwell at the conclusion of the war, and Major Harrison, a soldier not so entirely to the Lieutenant-General's liking as his prospective son-in-law, still, a deeply religious man and dauntless soldier, if too strongly tinged with that fanaticism which was now the mainspring of the new model army.
A discussion which involved some difference of opinion was taking place between the three Puritans; Cromwell, who was one against two, was much more silent than his wont, for it was usual for him to speak at great length, with many illustrations of his meaning (which served, however, as much for confusing his purpose as for enlightening it, and had already got him the name of dissembler among his opponents) and great fervour and enthusiasm; he could never be called taciturn, but to-night he was silent with a kind of dumbness as if one of his melancholies were on him, whereas Harrison and Ireton expounded their case with much rigour and eloquence.
And their case was that the King was utterly and entirely not to be trusted, and that any pact or bargain made with him would be a useless thing, not worth the sheepskin it was written upon.
"As witness," said Major Harrison, "his solemn protestation to the Commons that he loved them as his own children, and a few days after his coming down to the House and claiming the five—as witness his promises and false oaths to Parliament which his papers taken at Naseby did show he never meant to keep, but was the while trying to bring over Lorrainers to cut our throats—and what of this last business in Ireland when he sent Lord Glamorgan over to stir up the Irish Papists, and then, when the scheme was discovered, forsook my lord and utterly denied him and the Papists too?"
"As he forsook Strafford," added Ireton. "That deed alone would have spoilt the credit of a private man, and to my thinking spoils the credit of a king too."
"He tried to save him," said Cromwell briefly.
"Nay, his lady, being Sir Denzil Holles' sister, was the one who made the effort for the reprieve, as I knowfrom Sir Denzil," replied Ireton; "the King shook him off like an old cloak, as he would shake off any friend he thought was likely to be hurtful to him."
Harrison took up the theme with the greater vehemence of his low origin and coarse training, for though his noble appearance and military appointments gave him some of the appearance of that equality with his fellow-officers which he claimed by reason of his military rank, still, when he spoke, it was obvious that neither the levelling of war nor religion could do away with the distinctions of birth and education; Cromwell and Ireton were as clearly gentlemen as Harrison, the son of a butcher, was clearly not.
"What is dealing with the King but trafficking with Egypt," he concluded his peroration, "and setting up a covenant with the powers of darkness? Can good come from tinkling with such as Charles Stewart? Nay, rather a curse upon the land."
Oliver Cromwell took the pipe out of his mouth; he sat near the entrance to the tent, and the feeble moonlight was full over his rugged profile.
The one oil-lamp had burnt out, and the three soldiers either had not noticed, or were indifferent to the fact, that they were sitting in the half-dark.
"Shallow and frivolous he may be, nay, hath been proved to be," said Cromwell slowly. "But he is the King.Major Harrison, those words are as a tower of strength, as a wand of enchantment—there is the weight of seven hundred years or more to support them—and Charles, without one soldier, means more to England than you or I could ever mean were we backed by millions."
"During those seven hundred years you speak of," replied Harrison grimly, "there have been kings so detestable that means have been found to put them off their thrones. The thing is not without precedence."
"Nay, surely," said the Lieutenant-General gently;"but in the wars and quarrels of which you speak some rival prince was always there to take his kinsman's place. This is not a dispute among kings and nobles, but an uprising of the people for their liberty to force the King to grant them their just demands—therefore, the case is without precedent."
"And what, sir, do you deduct from that?" asked Henry Ireton.
"Why, that if we put the King down there is no one to set in his place. The Prince of Wales hath gone abroad to the French Court and a papist mother; the King's nephew, the Elector Charles Louis, who was flattered with some hopes of the succession, is a silly choice; the King's other sons are children, Rupert and Maurice are free lances—and which of these, were he ever so desirable, would be accepted by the nation while the King lives?"
There was a little pause, and then Harrison said boldly—
"Why need we a king at all?"
"It is a good form of government," replied Cromwell, "and I believe the only one the English will take. If you have no king you may have a worse thing—every shallow pate faction casts to the top seizing the direction of affairs. It was never the design of any of us," he added, "to depose the King when we took up arms."
"Nay," admitted Ireton, "the design was to bring him to reason, but how may that be done when we deal with one who knows not the name of reason?"
"Now," said the Lieutenant-General, "he has no power to be false. Nor will the Parliament ever again be as defenceless as it was when he was last at Whitehall."
"Then," put in Ireton shrewdly, "if you offer terms to the King which leave the power of the sword with the Parliament, you offer what he, even in his utmost extremity, will not accept."
"We have had no experience of what he will do in extremity," replied Cromwell, "since he has never come to it till now."
"But has he not," cried Harrison, "always refused to give up what he terms his rights? Did he not contemptuously reject the Uxbridge Treaty?"
"As any man might have guessed he would," replied Cromwell dryly; he had been no party to the folly of the Presbyterians in asking the King to accept these impossible conditions. "He will always be a Prelatist, yet he might—nay, he must—rule according to the laws of England, and allow all men freedom in their thoughts."
"He never will!" exclaimed Harrison.
"He must," repeated Cromwell.
His pipe had now gone out; he knocked out the ashes against the tent pole and rose.
"The settlement of this war," remarked Henry Ireton, "is like to be more trouble than the fighting of it."
"What," asked Cromwell, with that half-moody, half-tender melancholy that so often marked his speech, "avail these doubts and surmises? It is but lost labour that ye haste to rise up so early and so late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness—'it is in the Lord's hands—the Lord's will be done.'"
Major Harrison rose also; he wore part of his armour; vambrace and cuirass clattered as he moved.
"Ay," he said, "worthy Mr. Hugh Peters did wrestle in prayer with the Lord for three hours on that point, and afterwards held forth in lovely words—yet were we still in darkness as to God's will with us——"
"Doubt not," answered Cromwell fervently, "that He will make it manifest as He hath done aforetime."
He paused in his pacing and turned to face the huge soldier, who now stood with one hand on the tent flap, holding it back.
The moon was sinking, a white wafer behind the gates and towers of Oxford, but the first flush of the dawn replaced her misty light.
"I look for the Lord!" cried Cromwell. "My soul doth wait for Him, in His word is my trust—'My soul fleethunto the Lord, before the morning watch, I say before the morning watch!'"
"Ay," added Harrison, with a coarser enthusiasm and a blunter speech; "and when the Lord cometh what shall He say—but slay Dagon and his adherents, put to the sword the Amalekite and Edomite and all the brood of the Red Dragon. And who is the foremost of these but Charles Stewart?"
"The Lord," replied Cromwell, "hath not yet put it into my soul to put the King down, nor to utterly slight his authority. Yet on all these matters I would rather be silent—this is scarce the time for speech on this subject."
Major Harrison picked up his morion, which bore in front the single feather that denoted his rank, and with a few words of farewell left the tent.
Ireton prepared to follow him.
"A good repose, Harry," said Cromwell affectionately. "We have talked over long, and I fear to little purpose. We must come to these arguments again at Westminster. Get now some sleep—farewell."
When Henry Ireton had gone, Cromwell continued to walk up and down the worn turf that formed the floor of the tent.
"Ah, soul, my soul," he muttered, "art thou wandering again in blackness, not knowing which way to turn? Do the waters come in and overwhelm thee? Yet did not the Lord receive thee into His grace, and make with thee a Covenant and a promise? The sword of the Lord and Gideon!—has it not been given thee to wield that weapon, and to triumph with it? Was not the Lord's hand plainly shown in that they have felled the malignants as the bricks of Basing that fell down one from the other? And hast thou not permitted them to be utterly consumed from the land, even from Havilah unto Shur?"
While he thus exhorted and chided some inner weakness or sadness that was liable to come over him, most often at night, and when he was inactive, speaking aloud, as washis wont when thus excited, he was startled by the sudden entry of one of his officers.
The man was preceded by the soldier in attendance on Cromwell, who had kept guard outside his tent, and now carried a lantern, the strong beams of which, disturbing the dubious light of the tent, showed the figure of Cromwell standing by the camp-bed on which his armour was piled.
"Sir," began the officer, "we have made, outside the city, a prisoner, whom it is expedient Your Excellency should see."
"For what purpose, Colonel Parsons?" asked Cromwell wearily, and hanging his head on his breast, as he did when tired or thoughtful.
"Because the malignant, defying us, with much fury, did declare a strange thing. He said that the King had escaped from Oxford two days or so ago."
Cromwell looked up sharply; his face seemed full of shadows.
"Bring the prisoner before me," he said briefly, and seated himself on the leathern camp-chair at the foot of his rough couch.
The officer retired, and soon returned accompanied by two halberdiers escorting a young Cavalier, completely disarmed and dusty and disordered in his dress, as if he had made a fair struggle before surrendering his liberty.
"Thy name?" asked Cromwell.
"Charles Lucas," replied the young man.
"And what hast thou to say of this escape of the King from Oxford?"
The young man laughed.
"I may now freely tell thee, thou cunning rebel, that His Sacred Majesty is by now safe in the hands of his faithful Scots."
Cromwell scarcely repressed a violent start.
"He went from Oxford in the guise of a groom," continued Sir Charles, in a tone of amusement and triumph; "and I, for one, helped him."
"Even so?" said Cromwell, and gazed upon him absently.
"Shall I not," asked Colonel Parsons, "have the young malignant shot before the sun is up?"
The Lieutenant-General roused himself from deep thought with an effort.
"Nay, let him go," he said; "we want no more corpses nor prisoners."
Parsons, with the freedom the Independent officers took, remonstrated.
"He is a Socinian, a Prelatist, an Erastian—even as a soldier of Pekah or Jeroboam!"
"Let him go," repeated Cromwell, with his usual mildness, "it is now a matter of days. Spare all the blood you can, Colonel Parsons."
The dark red flushed the royalist's cheek.
"I want no mercy nor quarter from rebels," he said haughtily.
"Silly boy," smiled Cromwell, "take thy vaunts elsewhere," and Sir Charles, whether he would or no, was hustled out of the tent.
Cromwell sat motionless awhile, holding his hand before his eyes.
"The Scots," he was swiftly thinking, "what a turn is here ... he will not take the Covenant.... Then he is ours for the asking ... helpless any way ... the Scots!... Thou art an ill statesman, Charles Stewart.... Methinks the war is ended."
In June of that year two women sat together in an upper room of a humble, though decent, house in London, near the Abbey of Westminster and the Hall where the Parliament was now sitting.
This was a back street, crooked and obscure; never as yet had it been touched nor disturbed by the clamours and tumults which of late had risen and fallen through the broad ways of London like the tempestuous rising and falling of the winter sea.
In the little garden stood a lime tree, now in full leaf, and the sun, striking through the branches, filled the room with a soft greenish light, and in and out the boughs and sometimes in and out of the open window a white butterfly fluttered.
The two women sat near the window and talked together in low voices.
One was in her prime but spoilt by sorrow and sickness, her blonde hair mixed with grey as if dust had been sprinkled upon it, her face peaked and thin, her lids heavy, her eyes dimmed; the other little beyond girlhood, but she too disfigured by suffering, and nothing remaining to her of the pleasant beauty of youth save the flowing richness of her red-gold curls.
Both were simply, even humbly, clad, in heavy mourning.
The younger, after a pause of silence during which both gazed out at the sun among the green with eyes that no longer kindled to such a sight, remarked—
"Bridget Cromwell is married to-day."
"Yes," replied the other; "they say it is a sure sign of a general peace."
The young gentlewoman made no reply to this remark, but glanced down at the wedding-ring on her fair thin hand.
"I wonder," she cried fiercely, "if she is as happy as I was when I was a bride. I wonder if she will ever come to be as unhappy as I am now!"
Lady Strafford did not reply, and her companion, with the tears smarting up into eyes already worn with weeping, continued—
"I could find it in my heart to wish that the rebel's daughter might find herself, at my years, a childless widow!"
"Hush, Jane," said the Countess; "this is not charity!"
"The times," replied Lady William Pawlet, "do not teach charity. Thou art nobly patient, but I have not yet learnt to hush my railing. All, all gone and an empty life! Madonna! how can one support the burden! Oh, to be a man and go forward in the front ranks to die as Lord Falkland did! But to be a woman—a woman who must wait till she die of remembering!"
"There is no answer to be made—none," said the Countess; "the heart knoweth its own bitterness."
"And we sit here in poverty, bereaved and desolate, and Oliver Cromwell hath my Lord Worchester's estates and the thanks of Parliament," continued Lady William, following out thoughts too bitter to be kept silent. "Loyalty now must go barefoot and impudent knavery swell in high places! I will go abroad to the Queen in Paris—she too is desolate and maybe can employ me about her person, for I will no longer be a charge on you, madam. Will you not," she added, in a more timid tone, "come too?"
"I will not, willingly," replied the elder lady firmly, "ever see Her Majesty again. Nor yet the King. ThankGod I can keep my loyalty and wish His Majesty a safe deliverance from all his present perils, but this I know, that were he to taste the bitterest death and she the bitterest widowhood, both, in the extreme hour of their misery, could endure no greater torment than to remember Lord Strafford and how he died."
She spoke quietly without raised voice or flushed cheek, yet so intensely, that Jane Pawlet, who had never heard her mention this subject before, was horrified and awed.
"The world is upside down, I think," she murmured. "It all seems to me so unreal—I doubt it can be more strange in hell."
"You are young," replied the Countess, "and may live to think of all this as a clouded dream. But my life is over."
"You have been the wife of a great man," cried Lady William Pawlet, "and you have children."
"Whom I must see grow up as landless exiles, bearing an attainted name," said Lady Strafford, with a stern smile.
"But you have fulfilled yourself," returned the other, "while I have been, and am, useless. Ah me, how differently I dreamed it!"
Then the poor widow, overwhelmed by recollections of a happiness which now seemed the doubly dazzling because it had been so brief, rose to conceal her emotion, and moved restlessly round the room.
Lady Strafford glanced at her and, with an effort to distract her mind, touched on another subject.
"I had a letter from Margaret Lucas in Paris—so ill spelt I can hardly read it; but it seems the Marquess of Newcastle hath come to St. Germains and that they are reading each other's poetry—so belike there will be a match there."
"Ah yes?" said Lady William heavily.
"They have both lost their estates," continued the Countess, "so it will be a fair trial of their love and constancy."
As she spoke there was a light, almost uncertain knock on the door.
Lady Strafford, who, in her narrow circumstances, kept no servant, looked from the window cautiously.
"It is my brother," she said, and the younger lady at once left the room, soon returning accompanied by Sir Denzil Holles.
This gentleman had always been of a contrary party to the Earl of Strafford, and in the first part of his life had seen but little of his magnificent sister. He had, however, done his utmost to save the Earl's life, and was now almost the principle support of the Countess and her children.
He was not in arms for Parliament (though he had been one of the famous five members), and, being estranged from the army by the fact of his Presbyterian religion, and animated by a great dislike of Oliver Cromwell, he stood as much aloof as he was able from the clashes of the times, though he led a considerable party in the Commons.
"Any news?" asked his sister, after greeting him affectionately.
"The usual," replied Sir Denzil gloomily. "Oxford surrendered—the princes and Sir Ralph Hopton are gone beyond seas—Sir Jacob Astley with the last force of royalists hath been taken—and Bridget Cromwell is now Bridget Ireton."
"The King's cause, then," said the Countess, "is utterly lost and ruined?"
"As far as it can be maintained by arms, it is," replied her brother, who, though he had been imprisoned by King Charles, showed no great elation at his downfall. "And as it is certain he will not take the Covenant—why, you may take it it is altogether ruined."
"He will not?" asked Lady William Pawlet.
"Nay, though they have entreated him on their knees, with tears—as have we, the Presbyterians—and if he will not take it, there is not a single Scot will shoulder a musket for him."
"It seems," remarked the Countess quietly, "that the King can be faithful to some things."
"Ay," said Sir Denzil, "to the Church of England and his Crown. I believe he would resign life itself sooner than either."
"Therefore if the Scots will not fight there is an end of the war?" said his sister. "Well, Denzil, what shall we do?"
"Get beyond seas, unless I can put down the army," he replied. "This is no longer a country for such as I. The King is overcome—but in his place is like to be a worse tyrant."
"You mean Oliver Cromwell?"
"Yes," said Denzil Holles bitterly. "That man is now the front of all things—he hath the army at his back and groweth bigger every day."
"The talk is," said his sister, "that he would make accommodation with the King, whereas many of his party are for measures the most extreme, even for setting up a Republic—so it is said—but I know not. What does one hear but echoes of echoes in a retirement such as this?"
"It matters not," replied Sir Denzil, "things are all ajar in England. I have a mind to Holland to a little quiet, some books, a few friends—Ralph Hopton is at the Hague. I can be no use in this whirligig, and I will save what little credit, what little fortune, I have left."
He had often spoken so before, but had always been drawn back to the whirlpool at Westminster, and his sister believed that he would be so again.
Lady William Pawlet had listened wearily to this conversation between brother and sister. Her personal anguish had dimmed all politics for her; the rebels were now to her simply her husband's murderers, the royalists the party for whom he died. More important to her than the ultimate fate of King and Parliament was the memory of the morning of Naseby when she had knotted Sir William's scarf over his cuirass and hung a little silver saint round his neck as a charm against evil. She watched the whitebutterfly which fluttered in the upper branches of the lime, and thought of the legend of the Ancients which chose this insect, for its light purity and because of the hideous creature from which it came, as an emblem of the soul; and she wondered if her lord's soul was hovering somewhere beneath heaven, watching her, or if he was already in the Fields of Paradise. Her chief consolation remained that he had been confessed and absolved before he went to the battle....
"Well, well," said Lady Strafford, "London is no place for me—every paving-stone hath a memory.... And you, child, will you go to Paris?"
"Yes, madam, to the Queen, who was always a good friend to me. We have the same faith, as you know."
"The noble family of Pawlet," remarked Sir Denzil gracefully, "have a great claim on the house of Stewart. The defence of Basing was one of the noblest actions of this unhappy war."
"The Marquess lost everything," said Lady William Pawlet. "Even the bricks were pulled down and sold—even my lord's shirts—and his bedchamber invaded by the vulgar, who burnt all the tapestry there for the sake of the gold threads in it, and they were the most beautiful hangings in England. What is loyalty's reward? Bitter, I fear, bitter."
She glanced out of the window at the unchanging sunshine as if it hurt her eyes, then moved away again restlessly round the room.
The Countess made an effort to stir a silence that was so full of memories, of regrets, of disappointments.
"Well," she said, "the war is over and we shall go abroad; but what will happen in England?"
"That," replied Sir Denzil sternly, "is very much in the hands of Oliver Cromwell."
"Robin, be honest still. God keep thee in the midst of snares. Thou hast naturally a valiant spirit. Listen to God, and He shall increase it upon thee, and make thee valiant for the truth. I am a poor creature that write to thee, the poorest in the world, but I have hope in God, and desire from my heart to love His people."—Lieutenant-General Cromwell to Colonel Hammond, Nov. 1648.
On a summer afternoon in the year 1647, an officer, with a small escort of arquebusiers, rode from Putney to Hampton village, and turning briskly towards the palace, passed unchallenged, and saluted by the sentries, through the great iron gates, over the moat, and stopped at the principal entrance.
The captain of the guard-house came out.
"'Tis Lieutenant-General Cromwell!" he exclaimed.
"Ah, Colonel Parsons," returned the other pleasantly. "I do recall that thou went here——"
"Things have changed since we besieged Oxford, sir," said Parsons.
"Ay, and gotten themselves into a fine confusion," replied Cromwell; "but I will see the King. Tell His Majesty who waits."
"Nay, sir, step in," said Parsons; "the days are gone by when men had to wait for an audience of His Majesty."
"Yet I trust to it that he is entertained with civility?" said the Lieutenant-General. "Were it otherwise it would look very ill."
Without waiting for a reply to this, which was intended more as a rebuke to Parsons' tone of speech than as question, for Cromwell knew very well how the King was treated and lodged, the Lieutenant-General passed up the stairs and along the galleries towards the royal apartments, preceded by one of the palace attendants.
Parsons looked after him with mingled admiration and envy.
"There goes the darling of the army and the terror of the Parliament," he said to another officer who had joined him. "They no more know what to do with Noll Cromwell than they know what to do with Charles Stewart."
He voiced the common view of the situation of the Parliament men; the which had indeed found themselves in greater difficulties during the peace than they had done during the war, though they had succeeded in getting the Scots out of the kingdom and the King into their own hands.
After wearisome and confused negotiations between the King, the Scots, and the Presbyterians had come to nothing through Charles' haughty refusal to forsake the Church of England and take the solemn Covenant, the Parliament had paid the Scots ₤20,000, as an instalment of the pay due to them, and on this the Northerners had marched away across the Borders to the endless disputes among themselves, headed by Argyll, the Covenanter, and Hamilton, the royalist, who were now one up, now one down, like boys on a see-saw.
The King had been delivered to the Parliamentary Commissioners and lodged with great respect at Holmby.
And then the Parliament was confronted with other problems: On one hand the clamours of the people for a good understanding with His Majesty, and on the other side the claims of the army, which refused to be disbanded without the arrears of pay owing, which arrears were not forthcoming except in so small a proportion as to be indignantly refused by the soldiers.
Some of the right was on the side of the army and all the might. Neither Parliament nor nation could do anything with them, especially as all the force and fervour of the new Puritan religion which had defeated the King was to be found in the ranks of the soldiers, for nearly all the Parliament men were Presbyterians, and nearly all the army belonged to one or other of the enthusiastic sects commonly named 'Independents'; and oft either side of thiscleavage of religious belief was nearly as much bitterness as had animated Puritan and Papist against each other.
Denzil Holles had resolved to stay in England, and was busy leading a party in Parliament against the chiefs of the army, principally against the Lieutenant-General, who was looked upon as the great man of his side, nay, by some, as the great man of the nation.
He, on his part, maintained a singular quiet, nor put himself forward in any way. He had moved his family from Ely to London, and there resided quietly or moved about from place to place as his duties called, contradicting no man and interfering with none; yet somehow his figure was always in the background of men's thoughts, and all either feared him, or looked to him hopefully as their case might be, as if from him must come, sooner or later, the healing of the schisms, the twisting together of the intricate strands of faction, the smoothing out of the tangled confusions that now maddened and bewildered men.
There were able, honest leaders in every sect and faction, there were clever, high-minded politicians like Sir Harry Vane, there were energetic and successful soldiers like Sir Thomas Fairfax, and there were men like Ireton who combined the qualities of both—all of whom were respected and followed by their several parties. But none stood out so vividly in the eyes of both friend and foe as did the figure of Oliver Cromwell, whose cavalry charges had turned the tide of battle at Marston Moor and Naseby, who was the idol of that army which seemed now to hold the balance of power, and whose utterances in Parliament had shown him to be as decisive, as wary, as brilliant in attack, as quick in resource, as commanding a personality in politics as he was on the battlefield.
Yet there was perhaps no one, among all the men whom the times had made prominent, who kept so in the background of events during the last turmoils, confusions, and intricacies of the negotiations and consultations betweenthe King, the Scots, the Parliament, the Army, the Presbyterians, and the Independents.
Since the conclusion of the Civil War, the King had been, and continued to be, the great element of discord and difficulty. No one could resign themselves to do without him, and no one knew what to do with him; the Scots had given him up in despair, and the parliamentary Commissioners found him equally impossible to deal with. A general deadlock had been solved, Gordian knot fashion, by the army; Cornet Joyce and six hundred men, acting under what orders no one knew, but acting certainly according to the general wish, had carried off the King (very much to his will and liking), from Holmby, to the great dismay of the parliamentary Presbyterians, and lodged him at Hinchinbrook, from whence he moved about with the army, treated in kingly style. He was finally taken to Hampton Court, the army headquarters being now at Putney, in such ominous nearness to London that the great city itself was believed to tremble, and at Westminster there was open turmoil.
Lieutenant-General Cromwell, who, with the other officers, had been ordered to his regiments when news came of Cornet Joyce's amazing action, but who had already gone (not without some haste, his enemies said, for fear of an arrest from the incensed Parliament, for it was credited that his was the authority under which Joyce had acted), had remained at Putney for some weeks before this visit of his to Hampton Court.
He was, with little delay, admitted to the King's antechamber, where Lord Digby received him, and soon into the King's presence. The apartment was one of the beautiful chambers built and decorated by Henry VIII; old oak, carved in a deep linen pattern and worn to a colour that was almost dark silver, formed the walls, and round the deep blue painted ceiling ran a design of "A. H." and the Tudor roses, quartered thus to please the first English Queen who died a public and shameful death.
An oriel window, brilliant with painted blazonry, was set open on to the gardens which sloped to the willow trees and the river, and in the red-cushioned window-seat the King's white dog slept.
The furniture was very handsome stately oak and stamped Spanish leather; above the low mantelshelf hung a picture by Antonio Mor, a portrait of the sad-faced Mary Tudor, in white cambric and black velvet, gold chain, and breviary.
Charles was seated at a coral-red lacquer cabinet or desk powdered with gold figures—a princely piece of furniture, rich and costly. Cromwell, seeing him, paused in the doorway and took off his broad-leaved hat.
The two exchanged a quick and steady look. Cromwell had last seen the King at Childerly House, only a few weeks before, when he and General Fairfax had ridden down to Huntingdon to meet His Majesty; but the interview had been brief, by torchlight, and the Lieutenant-General had taken little part in it. The King, too, had been largely obscured by a horseman's hat and cloak, so that the last clear remembrance Cromwell had of the King remained that of the famous day when Charles had come to Westminster to seize the five members.
That scene and the central figure of it remained very vividly in Cromwell's mind, even across all the stormy years which lay between then and now. He recalled the unutterable haughtiness, the poise, the splendour, the rich attire of the King then; he would not have known the man before him for the same.
Charles wore a brown cloth suit passemented with silver, grey hose, and shoes with dark red roses on them; his whole attire was careless, even neglected, and he had no jewellery, order, or any kind of adornment, save a deep falling collar of Flemish thread lace.
But the change in his attire was not so remarkable as the change in his appearance; his hair, which still fell in love-locks on to his shoulders, was utterly grey, and hisface had a grey look too, so entirely devoid was it of any brightness of colour, his features were swollen and suffused, and his eyes were heavy-lidded and unutterably weary.
It gave Oliver Cromwell a sudden start to see the King, whose mere name was such a tower of strength, who had vaunted himself so proudly, and been so tenacious of his royal rights, reduced to this semblance of beaten humanity who bore on his face the marks of how he had suffered in body and soul. Cromwell himself had changed too; he was a year older than Charles, but, in his untouched vigour and ardent air of strength and enthusiasm, looked many years younger; his buff and soldierly appointments were richer than formerly, and he carried himself with an air of greater authority and decision.
Charles set down the quill with which he was writing, and pointed to a chair with arms near the window.
"What can Lieutenant-General Cromwell," he said, with a most delicate, most scornful, emphasis on the title, "want with me?"
Cromwell gazed at him with unabashed grey eyes. It might be acutely in the King's mind that it was strange for a country gentleman to be thus facing a King of England, but no such thought disturbed the Puritan.
"Sir," he returned, "the nation is in a crisis that must end soon—the army and the Parliament are in disagreements. We are the victims of unsearchable judgments."
"Yes," agreed Charles, who was not sorry to hear it, and who hoped, in the troubled waters of these divisions, to fish for his own benefit; he was already like a wedge between Parliament and army, splitting them further apart.
"I am here," continued Cromwell, "as representing the army."
"Sent by a deputation?" asked the King keenly. His greatest hope was in the army.
"Sent by no deputation," returned the other firmly. "Inspired only by the Lord, yet what I offer I could engage the fulfilment of."
There was a quiet assumption of power in these words that was wormwood to the King, but he controlled himself.
"You have come to propose terms," he said. "I have been listening to terms for long weary months. What are yours?"
"Nay, I make no terms with Your Majesty," said Cromwell. "I only wish you to be sincere with your people."
It was what John Pym had said at the very beginning—before the war, Charles remembered; he remembered, too, that he had offered Pym a price and Pym had refused. "You did not bid high enough," the Queen said afterwards. Charles, ever untaught by experience, proceeded to repeat with Cromwell the tactics he had used with Pym. What, after all, could this man have come for, save to drive a bargain? And he was worth bargaining with, as Pym had been—powerful rebels both!
The King's eyes shot hate at the quiet figure before him, but he answered smoothly—
"Sincere! You and I speak a different language, sir, but I will try to understand you. You mean that the army will do something for me? That you might influence them on my behalf?"
Cromwell rose and moved to the oriel window; an expression of agitation swept into his face.
"Sir," he said, with deep earnestness, "Your Majesty is the only remedy for these present divisions—until a good peace be established, and you be again at Whitehall, the nation is but like a parcel of twigs which, unbound, cannot stand. Sir, I know there are extreme men who think otherwise, but they are of the sort who are always there, and must be never heeded."
A wave of exultation made the blood bound in the King's veins: he was then indispensable to the nation. His swift, secret thought was that he might regain his throne on his own terms, without yielding a jot of hisprerogatives, since his arch-enemy admitted what he had admitted.
"The army desires to see Your Majesty in your rightful place," continued Cromwell, "and would and could bring you to London despite the Parliament."
"Well?" asked Charles.
"We must have," said Cromwell, with a certain heaviness, "the things for which we have fought, for which we have poured out our blood."
A bitterly sarcastic smile curved the King's thin lips. Cromwell was coming to his price, he thought; he wondered what he would ask, and what might be promised with safety.
"We must have toleration for God's people," said the Puritan.
The King interrupted.
"I will not take the Covenant. I have already refused an army because of that condition."
"You are now, sir," returned Cromwell bluntly, "dealing with Englishmen, not Scots. We set no such store by the Covenant. I said, sir, toleration."
"A word," remarked Charles, "beloved of fanatics."
"A word," said Cromwell, unmoved, "dear to honest men. We would have all deal with God according to their conscience."
The King did not think it worth while to probe into the reservation this tolerance made in disfavour of Prelacy and Papacy, the two faiths he believed in. The whole gamut of theological questions had been run through and argued upon during the conferences at Newcastle, and had left Charles as firm an adherent as before of the Anglican Church. The whole subject of the Puritan faith, associated as it was with vexation, disloyalty, and rebellion, was too distasteful a one for him to enter on; he reserved his wit and strength for the more practical issues.
"Will you tell me briefly, sir, the main purpose of this visit?"
"I wished," said Cromwell, "to sound Your Majesty. The army would not waste its labours—and Your Majesty hath been slippery," he added calmly.
The outraged blood stormed the King's cheeks; but the several instances of his duplicity were too well known and too well attested to be for an instant denied.
"I am a prisoner," he said haughtily, "and therefore forbidden resentment."
With trembling fingers he drew nearer to him a bowl of yellow roses that stood on his desk and nervously pulled at the leaves.
Cromwell did not look at him, but at the peaceful and lovely view of garden and river beyond the oriel window.
"The army," he pursued quietly, giving weight to every word, "would have no trafficking with foreign powers, no bringing of foreign forces, no stirrings and meddlings in Ireland or Scotland, no vengeance taken on any of their number, a free Parliament, and free churches. To a king who could agree to these things—sware to them—on the word of a king, and on that pledge keep them—there would be small difficulty in his coming again to his ancient place and power. Remember these things, Your Majesty; consider and ponder them. I shall come again to consult with you. 'Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good: dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed—delight thou in the Lord, and He shall give thee thy heart's desire.' Cast thyself on these words, sir, that God hath moved me to say to thee."
He spoke with such earnestness, dignity, such extraordinary conviction that the King's sneer died on his lips, and though his sensation of respect was instantly gone, still it had been there.
"Above all," added Cromwell, "I pray Your Majesty be sincere. If you mislike what I have said, what I have asked of you—bid me not to come again."
The King took this to mean, "Will you deal with meor no?" and he answered without hesitation, for he was well aware of Cromwell's power and prestige.
"Come again and let us talk of these things at leisure. I commonly walk in the galleries in the afternoon. Let me some day have your company."
He rose; a smile softened his haggard face into something of its ancient grace.
"Do not disappoint me of your second coming," he said.
He held out his hand. Cromwell, without hesitation or confusion, kissed it and left.
While his steps were yet sounding without, Charles rang a bell on his desk that instantly summoned Lord Digby from the adjoining apartment.
"Open the window wider!" cried the King, with a shudder. "The air is tainted...."
"That man," added Charles, in a tone of great agitation, "will make terms. He came abruptly and left abruptly, he spoke obscurely—but his meaning was to offer himself for my service."
"It is no wonder," replied Lord Digby, "there is a great and widening rift between the army and the Parliament, and Cromwell hath been heard to very plainly urge on the Presbyterians the advisability of submitting to Your Majesty."
"What," muttered the King, walking about the room, "does he want?"
"Did he not tell Your Majesty? Methought that had been the object of his visit."
"He told me," replied Charles, "the usual demands—what the army would have, what it would not have. I take no notice of that. What doth he want for himself?"
"His price would be a high one," returned Lord Digby thoughtfully. "He is much esteemed by his party; he hath good hopes of rising."
"Faugh!" cried the King angrily. "He hathrisen—what more can he hope? He comes to me because he finds his usurped honours perilous, because he can hardly hold his own. There is no loyalty in the fellow. I take him to be a very artful, false rebel."
"Yet," said my lord earnestly, "he is worth gaining. I know of none whom the rebels think so highly of, and his interest in the army is supreme."
"I also have some interest in the army," said Charleshaughtily. "Dost not thou know it? Even as this Cromwell knoweth it—else why doth he come to me? Nay, he is well aware that I still count for something in this my kingdom."
"Still, I would say that it were well to gain Oliver Cromwell—if he be willing to bring the army over to Your Majesty. I say, he is greater in the public eye than we can think. His party taketh him for a man."
"And so he is, and therefore can be gained," replied Charles, with a bitter smile. "I tell thee it goes to my heart to deal with this fellow, whom I would very willingly see hanged; indeed, it does. But as I do believe he hath influence, I will do it. What would he have—some patent of nobility? It were fitting to offer him the rebel Essex's title. Hath he not some distant relation to that Thomas Cromwell who was the Earl of Essex?"
"I have heard it," assented Lord Digby, "and I believe that Your Majesty hath hit on a good bait. Cromwell hath much railed against the nobility, which is a good sign in a man that he would have a title himself."
"And Fairfax—I must throw a sop to Fairfax," continued Charles. "There is more loyalty and more manners in him than in his Lieutenant."
"He is not," added Lord Digby, "so useful."
Charles paused before the window.
"You know," he said, "that my best hopes are still in Scotland, and not with these rebels. If I can make a secret treaty with the Scots, I am independent of army and Parliament both."
Lord Digby was not practical nor level-headed. His loyalty was too sincere to allow him broad-mindedness in his view of the struggle now taking place in England, and his ideas were rather fantastical and partook of that lightness and even frivolity which characterized so many of the King's followers; but even he could not help seeing that Charles was playing a game which every day became more dangerous, and that this complicated and subtle intrigue was not suited to present circumstances. A straight dealing with the army leaders, the Cavalier thought, would have been better than these underhand negotiations with the Scots, who had already proved themselves so unreliable, especially as Charles never would, under any pressure, take the Covenant, and therefore his alliance with Scotland could only be based on delusion and fraud; while, at the same time, if these negotiations were revealed, the English Parliament and the English army would be further set against the King, and with England and the divisions in England lay Charles' best chance—not in his northern kingdom.
It was these constant intrigues and subterfuges on the part of the King, his blindness to his real interests, his unconquerable disdain of his enemies, his firm refusal to believe that any pact or agreement was possible between him, the King, and them, his subjects, his proud resignation, which would take any ill, but would never give way on any detail, however small, that had driven those fierce and downright Princes, Rupert and Maurice, out of England. Rupert had thought the Royal cause lost before he delivered Bristol, yet the King had had many chances since then, all lost, or missed, or flung away.
He was too extraordinarily incredulous of his enemies' successes; it seemed as if he could not believe nor remember that he was no longer what he had been, one of the foremost kings in Europe, but a monarch without an army, without a town, without revenues or allies, separated from his family, surrounded by adversaries, practically a prisoner, and dependent on the dole of the Parliament for the very bread he ate. Charles could not realize these things—his birth, his instincts, his character were too strong for his intelligence, though that was not mean—and he still blinded himself with the idea that he wasthe King, and that he needed no other claim and no other force than what lay in those words to eventually triumph over, and be signally revenged on, his rebellious subjects.
Not that Charles had shown this temper too openly or exhibited any outward folly in his long dealings with Scots and Parliament. These complicated negotiations had shown him at his best; he had been clever, learned, courteous, full of resource and firmness. The principle of his unalterable divine authority (the rock on which all the various hopes of a compromise were eventually shattered) he kept securely out of sight, being too proud to vaunt or rave. None the less it was there, and he was disdainfully storing up future vengeance for all of them—Scots, Presbyterians, Parliament men, army men, and Puritans—when the time should come for him to have done playing with them.
Such advisers as he had (the Queen was still the foremost) supported him in his views and in the means he took to advance his aims; but now affairs were become so desperate that he held the bare semblance of kingship only by the consent and tolerance of the Parliament and the army. And it occurred to many, as it occurred now to Lord Digby, that an open peace with the rebels on the best terms to be got was the safest, indeed the only, policy to be pursued.
Lord Digby ventured now to say as much, in guarded and respectful terms, but with as much weight as his own volatile nature (only too much like Charles' own) would allow.
The King, resting one elbow on the window-sill, his chin in his hand and his eyes fixed on the passing glitter of the river, listened with impatience hardly disguised.
Soon he interrupted.
"Next thou wilt advise me to take the Covenant," he said, "or to accept the articles offered me at Uxbridge or Norwich!"
"Nay," answered Lord Digby, with a flush on his fair face; "but I do say there is no reliance to be placed on the Scots."
"Wait," returned Charles obstinately. "I am of good hopes I can get an army from them without taking theCovenant, but on the mere promise to do so, and on some suspension of the bishops for three years or so—some compromise, worked secretly."
"Is this plan laid?" asked Digby, who had not before heard of it.
"Yea, with my Lord Hamilton, and then I shall be able to hang up all these knavish rascals who come to me to bargain—to offer terms tome!"
"Meanwhile flatter them," said my lord uneasily.
"I will flatter them," returned Charles, with a flash in his worn eyes. "I will talk of an Earldom to Cromwell—but I hope the Scots will be across the border again before the patent is signed!"
Lord Digby was still not convinced; it seemed to him that this overture from a man of the weight and influence of Oliver Cromwell was not an advance to be lightly treated at this delicate stage of affairs.
"This man is fanatic," he said. "Your Majesty must remember that. I believe he standeth more for principle than party, more for his ideas than for his gain. A title may allure him, but it is a matter where one would need to be careful, sire. The bait must be skilfully played, or this fish will not rise."
But Charles, though supremely constant on some points himself, found it impossible to believe in the constancy of those whose opinions were opposed to him: such as Cromwell were to him 'rebels,' and he gave them no other distinction.
"We shall see as to that," he replied impatiently. "What did this man come here for if not to get his price?"
"Methinks he came on behalf of his policy," said Lord Digby doubtfully. "Maybe he would have the credit of reconciling Your Majesty with the Parliament, and after the peace some great place in the army or at your Council board."
"These high ambitions may be useful to us," replied Charles, with a bitter accent, "and therefore we will encourage them. Meanwhile, our hopes lie across the border or across the sea—not in the rebel camp."
He was then silent a little while and seemed, as had become usual with him, to have suddenly sunk into a meditation or reverie: he would so do now in the midst of a conversation, the midst of a sentence even, as if his mind wandered suddenly from the present to the past, from the objects near to objects far away.
His face looked as if a veil had been dropped over it, so completely absent was his gaze, so utterly did an expression of melancholy hide and disguise all other.
Lord Digby stood watching him with bitter regret, with indignant sorrow, and as he gazed at this face which humiliation and anguish had distorted and altered as a terrible disease will distort and alter, as he noticed the grey locks, the thin, marred profile, the careless dress, a horrible conviction pressed on his heart with the certainty of a revelation: the King was ruined, broken, cast down; never would he be set up again, and these schemes and plots were mere baseless delusions. This conviction was as fleeting as it was strong, yet for one moment the faithful gentleman had seen his master as a thing utterly lost, and he turned his head away swiftly, for he loved the man as well as the King.
Charles turned from the window, his thin fingers still pressed to his face.
"Go and see if any letters have come," he said.
Lord Digby did not say that immediately a courier came he was brought to the King, and therefore there could be no letters without his instant knowledge, but turned sadly to go on his errand; he knew the King was waiting always for letters from Henriette Marie in France—imperious, passionate letters when they came, which he kissed every line of and sprinkled with the scalding tears of pride and love and regret.
As soon as Lord Digby had gone Charles drew from his doublet a gold chain, from which hung two diamond seals and a miniature in a case ornamented with whole pearls.
He touched the spring, the lid flew up, and he gazed at the little enamel which showed him the features of the Queen.
The painting had been done in her bridal days, and the artist's delicate skill had preserved for ever the seductive loveliness of her early youth; she wore white, and her complexion was the tint of blonde pearl, her dark hair hung in fine tendrils on her brow, her large eyes were glancing at the spectator with a laughing look, round her neck was a string of large pearls, and on her bosom a bow of pink ribbon.
So he remembered her as he had first seen her, when, at the first glance, she had subdued him into her willing bondsman: before he met her he had been cold to women, and after meeting her there had been no other in the world for him.
He never reflected if this complete absorption in her, this submission to her will had been for his good; he never recalled the many fatal mistakes she had advised, nor the damage done him by his unpopular Romanist Queen; he never even admitted to himself that the one action of his life for which he felt bitter remorse, the abandonment of Strafford, was mainly committed to please her; nor did it ever occur to him that many women would have stayed with him to the last, at all costs. The brightness of his devotion outshone all these things; he saw her image good and brave and infinitely dear, and of all his losses the loss of her was paramount. As he thought of her, his longing half formed the resolution to quit all these turmoils and escape to France, abandoning for her sake his last chances of keeping his crown.