Elisabeth did not answer; Cromwell was certainly not responsible for the military executions, so harsh and unnecessary, of Lucas and Lisle after the siege of Colchester; but it had been the work of Bridget's first husband, Henry Ireton (a man whom she had never liked), and so she could not condemn the action though her heart cried out against it. The Marchioness rose, and the gentle April sunlight flicked the scoured silk, the darned lace, the face so peaked and worn for one so young.
"Well, well," she said, with quivering lips, "one goes on living—but the world is never the same after these things have happened. How differently I dreamed it would be!"
"I also," answered Elisabeth Claypole. "I never thought of death at all. Far, far off I fancied him, and behold, he was knocking at the door. But the world does not heed poor silly women, madam; we are but the dust bruised by the tramplings of great events; nations march past and leave us weeping. God send you a good deliverance from your sorrows. I will do what little I can, and ask my father to receive your petition, but well I know it hopeless."
"I thank you," said Margaret; "from my heart I thank you for your good, your generous, graciousness. I cannot think of you as my enemy——"
"Why should you?" cried Elisabeth. "We are both English women. I hope the day is near when all such shall be united."
She rose and unlatched the lattice, and a fresh air blew in from the young leaves that quivered on the willows and the young grass that waved in the fields.
"The river!" said Margaret, looking over her shoulder. "I often dream of the river, it seems woven through everything—twisted in and out of the past years and all their story. In Paris, among strangers, I think of the river, and grow sad with home-sickness. The river is very dear—and means so much."
"I think so too," said Elisabeth. "Consider how it will flow on the same, hundreds of years hence, when all the present kingdoms of the earth will be dust like yester year's roses."
"I hope I shall die in England," said my lady irrelevantly; "and now farewell," she added bravely. "Forgive me my sad coming."
"Come again," interrupted the Lady Elisabeth, taking her hand. "I may have news for you. Where do you lodge?"
"With Mrs. Brydon, a cousin of my father over against the Exchange. I am called Mrs. Lucas there, for any pomp is foolish in such sorry circumstances."
"Come again in a few weeks—my father is so occupied with the Spanish War—but I will speak to him of my lord's estates. Yet I can promise nothing," she added reluctantly.
"Yet I love you dearly for the kindness," replied Margaret, holding out her hands.
Elisabeth took them in her own frail fingers; these two women were strangely drawn to one another.
"I pray Heaven you will recover," added the Marchioness. "I think you will recover. Madam, you will live to be very happy."
"God may make me happy," said Elisabeth, "but not on the earth now."
"Nay, you will live to encourage other unfortunates as you have encouraged me."
Both of them had tears in their eyes; obeying a mutual impulse, they bent and kissed each other on the cheek.
Elisabeth came with Margaret to the outer door of her apartments, and there gave her in charge to one of the ushers to be conducted from the palace with all courtesy.
Before she returned to her chamber she asked if His Highness was at leisure.
She was told that he was deeply engaged with his secretary on the questions to be put before the Council when he returned to Whitehall to-morrow.
Lady Newcastle returned to an alien London, and sat down in her forlorn and ancient splendour to write to her beloved lord in Antwerp, where he lodged in the house of the late King's painter, Sir Peter Rubens.
As the shadows fell over the city, over the fresh countryside, over the river, as the night moths came out and the early stocks and pinks in the gardens at Hampton Palace filled the air with sweetness, His Highness still toiled in his cabinet, and Elisabeth Claypole still sat at the open window of her room with folded hands and thoughtful eyes gazing across the twilight.
When the Marchioness of Newcastle, after waiting long and vainly, returned at length to Hampton Court and asked for the Lady Elisabeth, she was told that the Protector's daughter was too ill to see any one.
After lingering a little, and trying other sources of communication with the court and finding none, she returned sadly with her husband's brother to Antwerp to take up again her exiled life.
All through that summer and autumn Elisabeth Claypole had seemed sinking down to death. She knew little of what passed: of how, after long debates, His Highness had refused the title of King ('a feather in his cap,' he called it; a feather he would fain have had, many said, only the army had willed otherwise), but had been installed in purple and ermine as Lord-Protector of the new-formed Constitution and presented with Bible and sword; of how ambassadors had come and gone in England and the war with Spain proceeded brilliantly; how plots were formed and exposed and His Highness went in a continual fear of his life that was beginning to undermine his calm nerves and resolute courage, and of how he and his Generals toiled continually——
Of all this Elisabeth Claypole knew little; she was scarcely conscious of more than the darkened room in which she lay and of the figures of her mother and sisters coming and going softly, of her husband grieving by her bed, and her father's presence in such moments as he couldspare to hold her hand and speak comforting words to her tired ears.
By the spring they thought that they had cured her; but in the summer she drooped again, though she went to the marriage of her sister Frances with young Mr. Rich, the Earl of Warwick's heir.
Frances was the last to wed, for Mary was now Lady Fauconberg. Many finer matches had been suggested for this youngest of the Protector's daughters; some had even tried to bring about a marriage between her and Charles Stewart, and the women of His Highness' family had favoured this scheme, but Cromwell waved it aside—'If he could forgive his father's death, I could not forgive the loose manner of his life'—and Frances had wedded, after much opposition, Mr. Rich, a delicate youth.
In the June of this year of 1658 came the great news of the fall of Dunkirk, the defeat of the Spanish, and the flattering friendship of the French. London glittered with a congratulatory embassy from Paris; in the midst of the pageantry, His Highness, who had already interfered once to save the poor people of the valleys of Piedmont, was once more extending his mighty protection to them, and Mr. Milton, the Latin Secretary to the Council of State, was turning His Highness' letters into Latin: Mr. Milton dictated his translations now, for he was lately become utterly blind.
The news of the battle of the Dunes raised England to a yet higher point of fame than she had yet reached. France could refuse such an ally nothing, and Mazarin interfered to protect the Piedmontese.
So went affairs abroad and in England well too, save that the finances were strained, His Highness having dissolved the Parliament in February, preferring, indeed, to govern without one.
"God be judge between you and me," were the concluding words of his last speech.
Other sorrows beside the illness of his daughter visitedHis Highness this summer: Mr. Rich died a few months after his marriage, leaving poor Frances a widow at seventeen; the old Earl of Warwick died, an ancient friend of the Protector; most painful and terrible loss of all, the youngest son of the Lady Elisabeth died, and she fell again into illness and was soon at a desperate extremity.
In between his entertainment of the French ambassadors at Whitehall, his conferences with his Council, and all the routine of government, His Highness would take his coach and drive to Hampton, and sit for a while in his child's darkened chamber and pray with tears that her agony might be lessened.
His own health began to suffer. Those about him noticed that the deep gloom which had settled on his spirits was affecting his strength; he still looked and seemed in every way younger, much younger than his years; he had a great appearance of strength; he gave the impression of being firmly built, and set, and able to endure for a great while yet the powerful winds which buffeted his high and glorious pinnacle of splendour.
Yet those most with him, especially Thurloe, his ardent and faithful secretary, thought that underneath this calm and strong exterior he was much shaken in mind and health. His domestic sorrows were known to affect him sorely, his nerves were strained to breaking-point by the constant apprehension of assassination, the future was believed to weigh on him, for there was no settlement of the country for any period longer than his life, and it became daily more apparent how the whole fabric of Puritan government depended on that life, on his unique position and influence with the army, on the dominating force of his personality, on the glory of his prestige and the glamour of his genius.
He had always seemed so vigorous, and glowing with the light and the fire of an immortal spirit that no one associated him with age or death or thought about his successor; but it was possible that to himself, as the atmosphere ofdeath chilled his home, might come the reflection that the England of his making was as baseless as the Greece of Alexander, and might as easily fall to pieces at his death—only his captains were not the men to divide the spoils. What, then, would follow?
He may well have asked himself that question and pondered over it in these dark days.
The Lord Richard, his eldest surviving son, was a mere country gentleman, with neither strength nor talents—nay, rather of an indolent turn and a certain softness; to set him to hold together the various elements which controlled the nation would be to invite certain failure.
The Lord Henry, his second son, was as able a man as any about him and already of much distinction in his military and diplomatic career; but he was not the man to step into another's place: ambition did not spur his noble qualities. Then there were the Lord Fleetwood, his son-in-law, the Lord Lambert, Disbrowe, many fine, fearless soldiers, Blake, Monck. But where wastheman—the one pre-eminently marked out to continue the work of His Highness?
No one could point to such an one. The Lord-Protector had the right of naming his successor, but as yet had not done so; the new-founded Constitution (the last attempt to frame a civil government on the foundations of arbitrary military power) was scarcely complete, and after these last glorious successes in the Spanish War there was further persistent talk of a kingship for the Protector. Many said this title was a certain thing; but it was a thing yet pending, and with it the question of the succession.
There were many jars and confusions, too, in the inner state of England that might well weigh on the spirit of the Protector. His body was worn with gout and a slight but lingering aguish fever. He might neglect none of his business, and maintain the appearance of mental and physical strength, but John Thurloe, his constant companion, was not deceived.
"His Highness," he said to Whitelocke, "is a sick man, and these vigils by the Lady Elisabeth will wear him to a great disease."
That summer was notable for the fierceness of the heat: day by day the sun beat down without either rain or cloud, night after night the stars shone with unveiled brilliance; then towards the beginning of August a light wind blew for several days and cooled the air. Elisabeth Claypole seemed to rally a little as the great heat was relieved, and His Highness, who had left business for several days lately to watch by her, thought it safe to return to London, where the French notables were still being entertained.
On Friday the 6th of August he came back to Hampton Court; he came in a coach, for, having lately been flung from his carriage, he was too shaken to ride on horseback. That day he had been more than usually cheerful; he had even smiled at the reports from France: tales of how his Ironsides (oh, irony!), now fighting there side by side with the followers of the Scarlet Lady, had given their General trouble by their behaviour in the churches of the idolaters, one lighting his pipe from the candle on the high altar. Then he heard how Mr. Hugh Peters had endeavoured to make long sermons before the magnificent Cardinal, hoping to convert him from his deep errors.
At the name of Mr. Hugh Peters His Highness smiled no more; it recalled to him strangely that winter morning in Whitehall when he had paced the boarded gallery in sick agitation, and Hugh Peters, in his black clothes, had gone out to the scaffold and helped knock a staple in and hurried to and fro in enthusiastic excitement.... It seemed so long ago ... and now this same Hugh Peters was arguing with Cardinal Mazarin, and the young King of France was sending him a rich sword with a jewelled hilt ... a King who was the nephew of that other King who had knelt down at the block that January morning.
His Highness did not set much store by this costly sword: his victories had been won with plainer weapons.
While he was in his coach, hastening towards Hampton, he took from his pocket a pamphlet which was then making much stir in England. The title wasKilling no Murder, and it set forth with much eloquence that any murderer of Oliver Cromwell would be justified by God and man.
His Highness read the paper from beginning to end, then put it back in his pocket.
"There is no notice to be taken of such things," said John Thurloe, who sat opposite him.
"It is no matter one way or another," answered His Highness; and he took from his bosom a small Bible and gave it to Thurloe and asked him to read from it aloud, "For," he said, "I feel my eyes tired."
"What shall I read?" asked the secretary, leaning towards the light of the window and unclasping the Book: the coach had just turned by Turnham Green and the road was smooth.
"Read," said the Lord-Protector, "the fourth of St. Paul to the Philippians, the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth verses—read aloud in a strong voice."
Which John Thurloe did.
"'Not that I speak in respect of want: but I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere, and by all things, I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.'"
His Highness repeated the last sentence.
"'I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.' This Scripture did once save my life," he added, "when my eldest son, poor Robert, died, which went as a dagger to my heart—indeed, it did."
He paused and John Thurloe looked up, startled to hear him refer to a sorrow so ancient. But Cromwell's thoughts seemed to be in the past.
"In my great extremity," he continued, "I did read these passages of Paul's contention—of the submission tothe will of God in all conditions; and it was hard—indeed, it was hard. In my weakness I said, 'It is true, Paul,youhave learned this, and attained to this measure of grace; but what shallIdo? Ah, poor creature, it is a hard lesson for me to take out. I find it so!' But reading on to the thirteenth verse, where Paul saith, 'I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,' then faith began to work and my heart to find support, saying to myself, 'He that was Paul's Christ is my Christ too!'—and so I drew waters out of the well of salvation."
"Why should Your Highness remind yourself of this?" asked Thurloe anxiously.
"Oh, Thurloe!" cried the Lord-Protector, with a great sigh, "it is to nerve myself in case another of my children should be taken from me. If she should die—it would be almost more than I could bear. Yet God might take her, though I have wrestled with Him for her life, even as David wrestled for the life of his son. My brave, sweet one! She was always good and loving, was she not, Thurloe? Wonderful and inscrutable are His ways that He should lay such suffering and agonies on one so delicate and valiant!"
The secretary had no more to say; neither did His Highness speak again, but gazed out of the window at the sun-dried countryside, at the orchards where the dry wind blew the shrivelled leaves of red and gold from the fruit too early ripe, at the great elms and oaks rustling the foliage to the ground, at the thatched and gabled cottages where the children ran to the doors to watch the coach with the four horses and outriders and the troop of Lifeguards go by.
Soon they came in sight of the river, with islands and barges and reaches, where the boats were drawn above the tide and a few boys fished, knee-deep in mud.
Then they lost the river and passed between private mansions standing among trees, and so to the village of Hampton as the sun was sinking in a glow of unstained fire.
As they neared the Palace His Highness became very pale, and he looked once or twice with an air of dread from the window, as if he expected to see some awful change over the place.
But no scene could have been more peaceful: the river flowed softly between the fading willows and the banks where the tall grasses, white whorls of hemlock, and clusters of parsley flowers grew; the last light of the sun glowed on the red bricks of the Palace and cast long shadows from the summer flowers in the garden; up among the high chimney-stacks white pigeons fluttered home with light upon their wings.
Cromwell entered the Palace. The first to meet him was one of the grooms of his chamber; the man gave him a frightened look and moved away without speaking.
He went towards his daughter's apartments, and in the corridor Frances Rich, a child in widow's mourning, came towards him with staggering steps.
He paused.
"Oh, my father!" she said, and lifted a face swollen with weeping.
"What is it, my dear?" he asked, in a still voice. "Be calm, my child, my dear."
He took her trembling little figure by the shoulder and smoothed back the damp hair from her forehead.
"Is she dead?" he asked. "Is she gone—is Betty dead, dear?"
"Oh, my father!" sobbed poor Frances again, and seemed unable to find other words.
Elisabeth Cromwell came down the passage, and with her the Lord Claypole.
"Ah," said His Highness, "is it over? And I left her—yet only for a little—and she is gone."
His wife came and put her arms round his neck and wept on his shoulder a little, then she took his hand and led him to their daughter's chamber, followed by those two other mourners, also sick with grief and watching.
Elisabeth Claypole lay dead, she had fallen from one convulsion fit to another, and breathed her last breath, in great pain and suffering, but with a composed and cheerful mind and a serene and hopeful soul.
She was dead; very young she looked as she lay in the great bed in the darkened chamber with the shadows over her; the rich coverlet was straightened across her limbs, the sheet smoothed, the pillow shaken; she was at peace after the long tossings to and fro, the hot nights of agony, the dragging days of unconsciousness.
Very small she looked and delicate; her hair seemed like a handful of fine silk on the pillow, her hands white flowers on the coverlet; her head was drooping slightly sideways, and the gentle look she wore in life had returned, effacing all trace of suffering.
There were many standing round her; all made way at the approach of His Highness; he came up to the bed and looked down at her.
"'My life is waxen old with heaviness,'" he murmured, "'and my years with mourning.... I am become like a broken vessel.'"
He bent over her stillness, his transient sorrow breaking vainly against her eternal repose.
"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," said Elisabeth Cromwell, and touched her husband's hand.
He went to his knees on the bed-step and put his head on his folded hands.
"May He who sitteth above the waterflood comfort me—for in myself I can do nothing!" he muttered.
They left him there, for they thought that he prayed; but it was not so: the valiant spirit had been robbed of its matchless fortitude at last; His Highness was in a swoon of anguish.
From that day he sickened rapidly; his strength fell from him with a suddenness that amazed those about him. He attended business as usual, wearing the purple of royal mourning, but the heaviness of his spirit was noticed by all.
Towards the end of August, George Fox, the Quaker, came to Hampton Court to see His Highness about the persecution of the Friends; he went by river, and soon after he stepped ashore at Hampton he saw His Highness riding at the head of his Lifeguards, going towards the Palace under the shade of the riverside trees.
George Fox waited until the cavalcade, which was coming slowly towards him, into Hampton Court Park, had reached him, gazing steadily the while at that figure of His Highness, drooping a little in the saddle and looking ahead of him, with an extraordinary air of stillness.
"I felt and saw," wrote Fox afterwards, when he was back in his cobbler's shop in London, "a waft of death go forth against him, and when I came to him he looked like a dead man."
His Highness was very courteous; he checked his horse when he saw the patient figure, russet-clad, with the broad-brimmed hat, waiting for him, and welcomed Fox as warmly as he had done two years before when the Quaker saw him at Hyde Park Corner among his Guards, and pressed to his carriage window, and spoke to him gravely—as he spoke to him now, warning him, and laying before himthe sufferings of the Friends, even as the spirit moved him to do.
His Highness listened; the stillness of his demeanour, remarkable in one naturally so full of energy and eloquence, did not alter; he said very little, only kindly bade Fox come and see him at his house next day.
And so he rode on slowly towards the red palace, "and I," wrote Fox in hisJournal, "never saw him more."
For the following day, when he came from Kingston to Hampton again, the doctors would let no one see His Highness, who was fallen worse—of a tertian ague, they said—and would never ride at the head of his famous Guard again, either through Hampton Court Park or anywhere else. George Fox had been the last to see the Lord-Protector on horseback, girt with a sword.
Soon after he was moved by coach to London, where the air was thought to be better for his complaint; St. James's Palace, that he intended to lodge at, not being immediately ready, he was taken to Whitehall, and on the Wednesday following half the nation was praying for him, and half waiting breathlessly, "for a great deliverance."
In Whitehall, a meeting of preachers and godly persons besought God with prayers and tears to spare His Highness, and all over the city were apprehension, expectation, hopes, fears, and supplication.
So it had come to this: the twenty years of great events, with all the toil, achievement, triumph, tumult, and sorrow, had swept up to this moment when the gentleman farmer from St. Ives, who had received a command from God, lay dying at Whitehall, with that command executed as far as it is in a man to accomplish a mission he conceives Divine, dying, with England breathless, and the son of the late tyrant breathless too, and watching and waiting from across the water.
It seemed to many valiant souls as if this England so violently shaped anew into something of the form which was the ideal of Puritanism, purged and glorified, was no more than the vivified dream of this one man, and that when he passed from the earth it would be as when a sleeper wakes—the dream would be dispelled and all things become as they had been.
What he himself might think, now that he knew the summons had come, none could tell, for he was mostly silent during the ebb and flow of his illness, and only spoke to pray; once or twice the passionate entreaties to God, which he heard rising around him, and the passionate affection of his family and friends, seemed to rouse in him a desire and hope of life. He could not but know that his work was not yet finished, and that this was not the best of times for him to die.
"Lord, Thou knowest," he said, "that if I do desire to live, it is to show forth Thy praise and declare Thy works!" and, "Is there none that says, Who will deliver me from this peril?" then, "Man can do nothing; God can do what He will."
And at times he fell into a kind of enthusiasm, speaking much of the Covenants of Works and of Grace and expounding them; to his wife and children, who felt their very life being torn from them, he spoke, too: "Love not this world"—he repeated the words with great vehemence, as was his wont—"I say, love not this world; it is not good that you should love this world—children, live like Christians. I leave you the Covenant to feed on!"
But for the most he had done with human affection; weeping did not seem to touch that heart that had once been so tender to tears.
He did not even look at those about him, but upwards at the dark canopy of his bed; and to that inner eye which had beheld the sword stretched out of the cloud in the barn at St. Ives, it was no covering of tapestry which hung above him, but the threshold of the eternal world.
The dry wind, which had begun before the Lady Elisabeth died, and blown for weeks across the Island from seato sea, deepened and strengthened now from day to day, and at the end of this month of August, when His Highness was rapidly coming to the end of all storms and calms alike, a hurricane of wind arose—the most fearful, violent, and protracted any man could remember.
The angry seas sucked in ships and sailors and beat furiously on the coast, trees were uprooted, haystacks and barns overturned, tiles and chimneys cast down; in the cities men could scarcely stand in the streets for the wind which roared and piped round the corners.
The great man dying and the great storm raging became mysteriously connected in the minds of those watching and waiting breathlessly; there were not wanting those who said that it was the Devil come for His Highness, nor those who thought it was the sound of the wings of God's angels, nor those who thought that it was devils and angels both wrestling together.
It was drawing near to that most glorious day for Oliver Cromwell and his cause, the 3rd of September, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester, and of the calling of the first Parliament of His Highness—a day of general thanksgivings and triumph to all Puritans.
As the stormy winds rocked Whitehall Palace and rattled at the window out of which Charles Stewart had stepped to die, and at the window of the room where the Lord Protector lay, His Highness rallied from his slumbers and sat upright in his great bed and listened to the tempest, as a soldier might sit up in the dark and listen the night before a battle.
"I think I am the poorest wretch alive," he said, "but I love God, or, rather, am beloved by Him—I am a conqueror and more than a conqueror—'through Christ which strengtheneth me'"—so he repeated again the words which had saved him once, long ago. But as he sat up, hearkening to the blowing winds without, his comfort seemed to go from him.
"It is a fearful thing," he said, "to fall into the hands of the Living God!"
He raised himself up and stretched out his hand towards the wind as if he appealed to something in that tumult outside his palace.
"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!" he cried again.
So high and loud the wind howled that those about him shivered as if they feared to be struck by some supernatural force; but Cromwell sat erect, and again cried out, "I say it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!"
One of the chaplains praying in the adjoining chamber heard His Highness' raised and agonized voice and entered the sick-room.
To him Oliver Cromwell turned eagerly.
"Tell me," he asked, in a voice of intense wistfulness, "is it possible to fall from Grace?"
"Nay," said the pastor, "it is not possible."
"Then," said the dying man, "I am saved, for I know that I was once in Grace."
He clasped his hands, and the family and friends about him, whom he seemed to have forgotten, heard, in the pauses of the wind, his prayer—
"Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in Covenant with Thee through Grace! And I may—I will—come to Thee, for Thy people! Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service—many of them have set too high a value on me, others wish and would be glad of my death—Lord, however Thou do dispose of me, continue and go on and do good for them."
His voice rose now like the voice of a well man, almost as strong as the voice that had greeted with a psalm the rising sun before Dunbar.
"Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love—and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation—and make the Name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on ThyInstruments to depend more upon Thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample on the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too.
"And pardon the folly of this short prayer—even for Jesus Christ's sake. And give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure. Amen!"
And after this he lay down among his pillows and slept, despite the storm.
And there began to be whispers about the succession, which hitherto no one had dared name.
It was vaguely believed that His Highnesshadnamed him, some while ago, and the sealed paper containing his wishes was at Hampton. Thurloe and the Lord Fauconberg sent there for it, but the paper could not be found; and His Highness' body was fast sinking into eternal slumber, and his spirit escaping them, and they were all confused and amazed at what might be before them.
The faithful Thurloe approached his bed and asked him who was to be his successor.
At which His Highness turned his head and was silent.
"The Lord Richard?" whispered Thurloe, and the Lord Protector was believed to answer, "Yes, yes," but no man could be sure of what he said. Henry Cromwell was absent; the rest of his family were near him, but he seemed to forget them. Only twice he asked intensely for "Robert, Robert, my eldest son."
He fell now into great pains, but with them came great cheerfulness of spirit.
"God is good," he was heard to say—"indeed, He is—God is good—my work is done. Yet God be with His people."
On the eve of the thanksgiving day, which shall never be kept as a thanksgiving day again, save by an oppressed people, secretly in their hearts, the victor of the battles which made the 3rd of September glorious was seen to be very near the end of his restlessness and his pain.
He spoke to himself continually, judging and abasinghimself, and his eyes were continually turned upward to that rich canopy and rich ceiling, which was certainly neither covering nor concealment to him who saw the light beyond the palace roof.
His sad, forlorn wife (who saw but dark days ahead of her) besought him to drink and sleep and held out a cup to him.
"It is not my design to drink or sleep," he answered, "but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone."
All through the windy night he prayed brokenly; once he spoke of Harrison, and seemed troubled; once he asked God to spare Betty further pain, and again he said, "Is Robert dead?—and Oliver?"
When the sun was up over city and golden river, and the vast crowds waiting anxiously, His Highness had fallen to silence.
Neither to the God who waited for him, nor to his forlorn family, nor to the breathless nation did His Highness speak again in any earthly tongue.
That afternoon the Lord ungirt the sword with which He had invested his Captain twenty years before, and in Whitehall Palace Oliver Cromwell's lifeless body lay—and the nation flew asunder into confusion.
"My days are gone like a shadow, and I am withered like grass.
"But Thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever—and Thy remembrance throughout all generations....
"They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; they all shall wax old as doth a garment.
"And as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed:but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail." Amen. Amen.
Printed byMorrison & Gibb Limited,Edinburgh