THE KING FAILS
November had turned to May and my Lord Strafford's public agony was
over; he lay in the Tower a condemned man.
For seventeen days had he, in this most momentous trial of his,
defended himself, unaided, against thirteen accusers who relieved
each other, and with such skill that his impeachment was like to have
miscarried; but the Commons were not so to be baulked.
They dare not let Strafford escape them; they feared an Irish army, a
French army, they feared the desperate King would dissolve them, they
feared another gunpowder plot, and twice, on a cracking of the floor,
fled their Chamber. All fears, all anxieties, all animosities were at
their sharpest edge; the crowds in the streets demanded the blood of
Strafford, and did not pause to add that if they were disappointed they
would not hesitate to satisfy themselves with more exalted victims.
A Bill of attainder against my lord was brought forward and hurried
through Parliament. Pym and Hampden opposed it, but popular fear
and popular rage were stronger than they, and there was no hope for
Strafford save in the master whom he was condemned for serving.
He wrote to the King, urging him to pass the Bill for the sake of
England's peace.
London became more and more exasperated; rumours flew thick: The King's
son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, was coming with an army; money was
being sent from the French King; the Irish, that ancient nightmare,
were to be let loose; the Queen had raised a troop to attack the Keys
of the Kingdom and set my lord free by force from the Tower.
The Bill was passed, and on a May morning sent up for the King's assent.
He had, a week before, sent a message to the Lords, beseeching them not
to press upon his conscience on which he could not condemn his minister.
But the appeal had failed; Lords, Commons, and people all waited
eagerly, angrily, threateningly, for the King's assent.
He asked a day to consider; he sent for three bishops and, in great
agony of mind, asked their ghostly counsel. Usher and Juxon told him
Strafford was innocent and that he should not sign. Williams bid him
bow to the opinion of the judges, and bade him listen to the thunderous
tumult at his gates. London was roused, he said, and would not be
pacified until my lord's head fell on Tower Hill.
So the hideous day wore on to evening, and the King had not signed.
As the delay continued, the suspense and agitation in the city become
almost unbearable, and it took all the efforts of the royal guards to
hold the gates of the Palace.
The King was locked into his private cabinet, and even the Queen had
not seen him since noon.
Henriette Marie had passed the earlier part of the day with her younger
children. She had made several vain attempts to see the King and she
had denied herself to all, even to Lady Strafford and her frantic
supplications.
She had many agents continually employed, and during the day they came
to her and reported upon the feeling in the Houses, in the city, and in
the streets.
She saw, from these advices, that the King's situation was little
better than desperate. She saw another thing--_there was not, at that
moment, sufficient force available in the capital to control the
multitude_. They were, in fact, at the mercy of the populace.
When the haze of spring twilight began to fall over the stocks and
lilies, violets and pinks in the gardens sloping to the river, still
flashing in the sinking sun, and the first breaths of evening were
wafted through the open windows of the Palace, delicious with the
perfume of these beds of sweets, the Queen went herself and alone to
the cabinet where the King kept his anguished vigil.
For a while he would not open, even to the sound of her voice, but
after she had waited there a little, like a supplicant, she heard his
step, the key was turned, and he admitted her. She entered swiftly
and flung herself at his feet, as she had done at their first meeting
nearly twenty years ago, when he had lifted her young loveliness to his
heart, there to for ever remain.
Now she was a worn woman, her beauty prematurely obscured by
distresses, and he was far different from the radiant cavalier who had
welcomed her to England, but the fire of love lit then in the heart of
each had not abated; even now, in the midst of his misery of mind, he
raised her up as tenderly, as reverently, as when she had first come to
him.
"Mary," he said brokenly, "Mary."
He kissed her cold cheek as he drew her to his shoulder, and she felt
his tears.
But her mood was not one of weeping; her frail figure, her delicate
features, were alert and quivering with energy; her large vivid eyes
glanced eagerly round the room. On the King's private black and gold
Chinese bureau lay the warrant for my Lord Strafford's execution. So
hasty and resolved was the Parliament, also, perhaps, so confident of
their power to force the King's assent, that the warrant had been sent
before the royal consent had been given to the Bill.
The Queen drew herself away from Charles and rested her glance on him.
She wore a white gown enriched with silver damask flowers, her face,
too, was colourless save for a feverish flush under her eyes, and the
long-admired black locks hung neglected and disarranged over her deep
lace collar. She was a sorrowful and reproachful figure as she stood
regarding him so intently.
The King's white sick face, too, wore a look of utter suffering, in his
narrowed eyes was a bitterness beyond sorrow.
"Sire," said the Queen in a formal tone, "you shut yourself up here
when it would more befit you to come forth and face what must be
faced." She set her teeth, "The people are at the very gates."
Charles took a step back against the heavy brocaded hangings of the
wall.
"I will not sign--no--I will not assent," he muttered.
"Will not? Will not?" cried the Queen. "Charles, thou hast no choice."
"Dost thou advise me to do this infamous thing?" answered the King in
a terrible voice. "He is my friend, his peril is through serving me;
and he trusts me, relies on me--that is enough. Even as you came I
had resolved that, not even to save my sacred Crown, would I abandon
Strafford."
"And what of me and my children?" asked the Queen, in a still voice;
"do we come after thy servant? Is thy love for me grown so halting that
I come last?"
The King winced.
"Who would touch thee?" he murmured.
"Even those who, now outside this very palace, cry insults against the
Papist and the Frenchwoman. Charles, I tell thee this is playing on the
edge of a revolution--are we all to go to ruin for Strafford's sake?"
"He went to ruin for mine," replied the King.
"He failed," said the Queen, "and he pays. When we fail, we too will
pay. But this is not our time. The people demand Strafford, and we will
not risk our Crowns and lives by refusing this demand."
"He trusts me," repeated Charles, "and I do love him. He served me
well, he was loyal ... our God help me!... my friend----"
He turned away to hide the uncontrollable tears, and, opening a drawer
in the little Chinese cabinet, fumbled blindly among some papers and
pulled out a letter.
"This is what he wrote me," he faltered. "I have never had one like him
in my service.... Mary ... I cannot let him die."
He sank into a chair and, resting his elbow on the arm of it, dropped
his face into his hand; the other held the letter of my lord written
from the Tower.
The Queen had read this epistle; at the time it had moved her, but now
that sensation of generous pity was dried up in the fierce desire to
save her husband and herself from all the ruin a revolution threatened.
She went up to the King and took the letter from his inert fingers,
and, glancing over it, read aloud a passage--
"'Sir, my consent shall more acquit you herein to God, than all the
world can do besides. To a willing man there is no injury done; and as
by God's grace I forgive all the world with calmness and meekness of
infinite contentment to my dislodging soul, so, sir, to you I can give
the life of this world with all the cheerfulness imaginable, in the
just acknowledgment of your exceeding favours.'--
"Hear!" added the Queen breathlessly, "the man himself does not ask nor
expect this sacrifice of you----"
Charles interrupted.
"Because he is magnanimous, shall I be a slavish coward?"
"He is willing to die," urged the Queen; "he is pleased to give his
life for you----"
"Willing to die? Where is there a man willing to die? There is none
to be found, however old, wretched, or mean. Deceive not thyself,
Strafford is young, strong, full of joy and life--he hath a wife and
children and others dear to him--is it like that he is _willing_ to
die?"
The Queen's eyes did not sink before the miserable reproach in her
husband's gaze.
"Willing or no, he _must_ die," she said firmly. "He must go. Stand not
in the way of his fate."
"He shall not die through me," said Charles, with a bitter doggedness.
"Am I never to sleep sound again for thinking of how I abandoned this
man? He came to London, Mary, on our promise of protection."
"We have done what we could," returned Henriette Marie, unmoved, "and
now we can do no more."
"I will not," said the King, as if repeating the words gave him
strength. "I will not. Do they want everything I love--first
Buckingham--now Strafford----"
"Then me," flashed the Queen. "Think of that, if you think of your wife
at all."
This reproach was so undeserved as to be grotesque. In all the King's
concerns, from the most important to the most foolish, she had always
come foremost, and this was the first occasion on which he had not
absolutely thrown himself on her judgment and bowed to her desires.
Some such reflection must have crossed his tortured mind.
"You always disliked Strafford," was all he said.
"No," said the Queen vehemently, as if she disclaimed some shameful
thing. "No, never, and I would have saved him. Do not take me to be so
mean and creeping a creature as to counsel you pass this Bill because I
hate my lord."
She was justified in her defence; she had been jealous of the powerful
minister, and she had never personally liked him, but it was not for
vengeance or malice that she urged the King to abandon Strafford, but
because she was afraid of that power which asked for his death, and
because her tyrannical royal pride detested the thought that she and
hers should be in an instant's danger for the sake of a subject. And
when she saw her husband, for the first time since their marriage, so
absorbed in anguished thought as to be scarcely aware of her presence,
as to be forgetful of her and her children, she felt jealous of this
other influence that seemed to defy hers, and a fierceness that was
akin to cruelty touched her desperation.
"Who is this man that I should be endangered for his sake?" she cried,
after she had in vain waited for the King to break his dismal silence.
"He is my friend," muttered Charles.
"Save him then, or share his fate," returned his wife bitterly. "As for
me, I will go to my own country, and there find the protection that you
cannot give me."
Charles sprang up and faced her.
"Mary, what is this? What do you speak of?" he cried in a distracted
voice, and holding out to her his irresolute hands.
The Queen took advantage of this sudden weakening of his silent
defences; her whole manner changed. She went up to him softly, took his
hands in hers, and, raising to him a face pale and pleading, broke out
into eager and humble entreaties.
"My Charles, let him go--let us be happy again--do not, for this
scruple, risk everything! My dear, give way--it must be--we are in
danger--oh, listen to me!"
He stared at her with eyes clouded with suffering.
"Couldst thou but put this eloquence on the other side I might be a
happier man," he said. "Strengthen my conscience, do not weaken it."
His tone was as pleading as hers had been, but she perceived that he
was still obdurate on the main part of her entreaty, and she slipped
from his clasp and knelt at his feet in a genuine passion of tears.
"You have had the last of me!" she sobbed. "I will not stay where
neither my dignity nor my life is safe. Keep Strafford and let me go!"
The King turned away with feeble and unsteady steps, and going to the
window pulled aside the olive velvet curtains.
The twilight had fallen and the sky was pale to colourlessness; low on
the horizon, beyond the river, sombre banks of clouds were rising, and
at the edge of them, floating free in the purity of the sky, was the
evening star, sparkling with the frosty light of Northern climes.
The King fixed his eyes on this star, but without hope of comfort; cold
and disdainful seemed star and heavens, and God pitiless and very far
away behind the storm-clouds.
There was no command, no excuse, no reproof for him from on High; in
his own heart the decision must be and now--at once--within the next
hour. At that moment life seemed unutterably hateful to the King;
everything in the world, even the figure of his wife, he viewed with a
touch of sick disgust; the taint of what he was about to do was already
over him, his life was already stained with baseness, his happiness
corrupted.
He knew, as he stared at the icy star that was already being veiled
by the on-rushing vapours of the rain-cloud, that he would abandon
Strafford.
Though he knew that it would be better to be that man in the Tower,
against whose ardent life the decree had gone forth, than himself in
his palace, secure by the sacrifice of that faithful servant; though he
knew that in the bloody grave of his betrayed friend would be entombed
for ever his own tranquillity and peace of mind, yet he also knew
that it was not in him to stand firm against those inexorable ones
who demanded Strafford, against the tears and reproaches of his wife,
against his own inner fears and weaknesses which whispered to him dread
and terror of these hateful Parliament men and of this mutinous city of
London.
In his heart he had always known that he would fail Strafford if it
ever came to a sharp issue, yea, he had known it when he urged his
minister to come from York, and that made this moment the more awful,
that his secret weakness, which he had never admitted to himself, was
forced into life.
He would forsake Strafford to buy the safety of his Crown, his family,
his person, and Strafford would forgive him (he could picture the look
of incredulous pity on the condemned man's dark face when the sentence
was read to him), and the Parliament would scorn him.
Through the entanglement of his bitter and humiliating reflections, he
became aware of the sound of the persistent, low sobbing of the Queen
in the darkening room behind him, and he turned, letting the curtains
fall together over the fading heavens, the brightening star, the
oncoming storm.
The scanty light that now filled the chamber was only enough to let him
discern the white blur of his wife's figure as she knelt before one of
the brocade chairs with her dark head lost in the shadows and her hands
upraised in a startling position of prayer.
Her sobs, even and continuous as the breaths of a peaceful sleeper,
filled the rich chamber, the splendours of which were now gloomed over
with shadow, with sorrow.
Presently, as he watched her, and as he listened, the grim sharpness of
his anguish was melted into a weak grief at her distress; his impotency
to protect her from tears became his main torment.
"Mary," he said, "Mary--it is over--think no more of it--go to bed and
sleep in peace. London shall be content to-night."
He stumbled towards her, and she rose up swiftly and straightly,
holding her rag of wet white handkerchief to her wet white face.
"Ah, Charles!" she exclaimed, her voice thick from her weeping.
She held out her arms, he took her to his heart and bowed his shamed
head on her shoulder; but after a very little while he put her away.
"Leave me now!"
"This thing must be done at once--to-night--I cannot tell how long they
can hold the gates----"
"I must go out," said Charles, with utmost weariness; "get me a light,
my dear, my beloved."
She found the flint and tinder and, with deftness and expedition, lit
the lamp of crystal and silver gilt which stood on the King's private
bureau.
As the soft, gracious flame illumined the room, the King, who was
leaning against the tapestry like a sick man, looked at once towards
the fatal paper and beside it the pen and ink dish ready.
The Queen stood waiting; her face was all blotted and swollen with
weeping; she looked a frail and piteous figure; her youth seemed
suddenly in one day dead, and her beauty already a thing of yesterday.
"It is well I love thee," said Charles, "otherwise what I do would make
hell for me. Oh, if I had _not_ loved thee, never, never would I have
done this thing!"
"We shall forget it," answered the Queen, "and we shall live," she
added, straining her hoarse voice to a note of passion, "to avenge
ourselves."
She spoke to a man of a nature absolutely unforgiving, and at this
moment her mention of vengeance came like comfort to his anguish and
palliation of his baseness.
"I will never forget, I will never pardon," he swore, lifting up his
hand towards heaven. "Never, never shall there be peace between me and
Parliament until this shame is covered over with blood."
He snatched up the warrant with trembling hand.
"Send some lords to me," he cried. "I cannot sign this myself--get it
done--bring this most hateful day to an end!"
He sank into the chair on which her tears had fallen, and stared at the
paper clutched in his fingers as if it was a sight of horror.
Henriette Marie hastened away to tell the waiting deputies of the
Houses that the King would pass the Bill, and as she went she heard
a cry intense enough to have carried to the Tower where my lord sat
waiting the news of his fate.
"Oh, Strafford! Strafford! my friend!"