Colonel Pickering chose for his text, "I will arise against the house

of Jeroboam with the sword," and on that propounded a discourse to his

troopers as they were getting the sakers and culverins into position;

but Cromwell put his faith in the aforesaid psalm.

"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory, for

Thy mercy and Thy truth's sake.

"Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God? Our God is

in the heavens; He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased.

"Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.... _They

that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in

them._"

With these words in his mind, Lieutenant-General Cromwell gave the

order, near towards six of the autumn morning, for the attack.

All night the great lordly House, which had so long stood unscathed,

had been silent among its courts, lights showing at the windows and

above the Stewart standard floating lazily in the night breeze. There

were two buildings--the Old House, which had stood, the seat of the

Romanist Pawlets, for three hundred years, a fine and splendid mansion,

turreted and towered after the manner of the Middle Ages, and before

that the New House, built by later descendants of this magnificent

family in the modern style of princely show and comfort, both

surrounded by fortifications and works, a mile in circumference, and

well armed with pieces of cannon.

As the sun strengthened above the autumn landscape, the steel of morion

and breastplate could be discerned on the ramparts and the colour of an

officer's cloak as he went from post to post giving orders: these were

the only signs that the besieged were aware of the great number and

near approach of the Parliamentarians.

Soon after six, the dawnlight now being steady, and the attacking

parties being set in order--Dalbier near the Grange, next him Sir

Hardress Waller and Montague; and on his left Colonel Pickering--the

agreed-upon signal, the firing of four of the cannon, being given, the

Lieutenant-General and his regiments stormed Basing House.

A quick fire was instantly returned, and the steel morions and coloured

cloaks might be seen hastening hither and thither upon the walls and

works, and a certain shout of defiance arose from them (it was known

that they made a boast of having so often foiled the rebels as they

termed them, and that they believed this bit of ground would defy them

even when great cities fell), which the Puritans replied to not at all,

but directed a full and incessant fire, as much as two hundred shots

at a time at a given point in the wall, which, unable to withstand so

fierce an attack, fell in, and allowed Sir Hardress Waller to lead

his men through the breach and right on the great culverins of the

Cavaliers, which were set about their court guard. They, however,

with extraordinary courage and resolution, beat back the invader and

recovered their cannon; but, Colonel Montague coming up, they were

overpowered again by sheer numbers, and the Puritans flowed across the

works to the New House, bringing with them their scaling ladders. There

was another bitter and desperate struggle, the Cavaliers sallying out

and only yielding the blood-stained ground inch by inch as they were

driven back by the point of the pike on the nozzle of the musket.

Dalbier and Cromwell in person had now stormed at another point; the

air was horrid with fire-balls, the whiz of bullets, the rank smoke

of the cannon, the shrieks and cries that began to issue from the New

House at the very walls of which the fight was now expending its force,

like waves of the sea dashed against a great rock.

Not once, nor twice, but again and again did the stout-hearted

defenders, in all their pomp of velvet and silk, plume and steel,

repulse their foes; again and again the colours of my Lord Marquess,

bearing his own motto, "_Aymer loyaulte_," and a Latin one taken from

King Charles' coronation money, "_Donec pax redeat terris_," surged

forth into the thickest of the combat, were borne back, and then

struggled forward, tattered and stained with smoke.

But the hour of Loyalty House had come; the proud and dauntless

Cavalier, whose loyalty had endured foul as well as fair weather, had

now come to the end of his resistance to his master's enemies.

Nothing human could long withstand the rush forward of the Ironsides.

Colonel Pickering passed through the New House and got to the very gate

of the Old House.

Seeing his defences so utterly broken down and his first rampart and

mansion gone, the desperate Marquess was wishful to summon a parley,

and sent an officer to wave a white cravat from one of the turrets with

that purpose.

But the Puritans would listen to no parley.

"No dealings with this nest of Popery!" cried Colonel Pickering, whose

zeal was further inflamed by the sight of a popish priest who was

admonishing and encouraging the besieged.

After this the Cavaliers fell to it again with the sword, keeping up an

incredible resistance, and all the works and the courtyards, the fair

gardens, walks, orchards, and enclosed lands, the pleasances and alleys

laid out by my lord with great taste after the French model were one

bloody waste of destruction; sword smiting sword, gun replying to gun,

men pressing forward, being borne back, calling on their God, sinking

to their death, trampled under foot; the air all murky with smoke, the

lovely garden torn up and in part burning from fire-balls, the wall

of the noble House pierced by cannon-shot, the shrieks of women and

the curses of men uprising, the colours of my lord ever bravely aloft

until he who held them sank down in the press with a sigh, while his

life ran out from many wounds, and the banner of loyalty was snatched

by a trooper of Pickering's and flaunted in triumph above the advancing

Parliamentarians.

At this sight a deep moan burst from the House and dolorous cries

issued from every window, as if the great mansion was alive and

lamented its fate pressing so near.

Lieutenant-General Cromwell was now at the very gates of the inner

house, and these were, without much ado, burst open. The Cavaliers,

pressed upon by multitudes and broken at the sword's point, fell

back, mostly dying men, in the great hall; and on the great staircase

were some, notably my Lord Marquess himself, who still made a hot

resistance, as men who had nothing but death before them and meant to

spend the little while left them in action.

From the upper floors might be heard the running to and fro of women

and servants, the calling of directions, and the gasping of prayers,

while from without the cannon still rattled and smoke and fire belched

through the broken walls.

At last, my lord being driven up into his own chambers, and those about

him slain, Major Harrison sprang to the first landing and called upon

all to surrender; upon which eight or nine gentlewomen, wives of the

officers, came running forth together and were made prisoners.

Major Harrison pushed into the nearest chamber, which was most

magnificently hung with tapestries and furnished in oak and Spanish

leather--a great spacious room with candlesticks of gold and lamps of

crystal, brocaded cushions, and Eastern carpets--and there stood three

people, one Major Cuffe, a notable Papist, one Robinson, a player of my

lord's, and a gentlewoman, the daughter of Doctor Griffiths, who was in

attendance on the garrison.

These three stood together warily, watching the door, and when the

godly Harrison and his troopers burst in they drew a little together,

the soldier before the others. Harrison called on him curtly to

surrender, and named him popish dog, at which the Cavalier came at him

with a tuck sword that was broken in the blade, and with this poor

weapon defended those who were weaponless.

But Harrison gave him sundry sore cuts that disarmed him, and, his

blood running out on the waxed floor, he slipped in it and so fell, and

was slain by Harrison's own sword through the point of his cuirass at

the armpit.

Thereupon they called on the play-actor and the lady to surrender. She

made no reply at all, but stared at the haggled corpse of Major Cuffe,

twisting her hands in her flowered laycock apron.

And the player put a chair in front of him and turned a mocking eye

upon the Puritans.

"I have had my jest of you many a time," he said, "and if I had lived I

had jested still--but I choose rather to die with those who maintained

me----"

Here Harrison interrupted.

"This is no gentleman, but a lewd fellow of Drury Lane."

He was dragged from behind the chair.

"I have been in many a comedy," he cried, "but now I play my own

tragedy!"

Him they dispatched with a double-edged sword, and cast him down; he

fell without a groan, yet strangely murmured, "Amen."

Major Harrison, with his bloody weapon in his hand, swept across the

chamber through the farther entrance into the next, and his soldiers

after him.

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 in silk 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 who _trusteth 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 when the 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 a mighty

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.

CHAPTER VIII

THE KING'S FOLLY

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 know from 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 fleeth unto 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 was his 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."

CHAPTER IX

THE END OF THE WAR

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. Thank God 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 white butterfly 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."

PART III

THE CRISIS

"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._

CHAPTER I

THE ISSUE WITH THE KING

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 this cleavage 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 between the 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 his face 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

his prerogatives, 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 me or 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...."

CHAPTER II

THE KING'S PLOTS

"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 hath _risen_--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 Charles haughtily. "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 was _the

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 the Covenant, 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 to

_me_!"

"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.

He might have come to this resolution before and carried it through had

he not too well known her pride and her ambition.

"If you make an agreement with Parliament," she had written, "you are

no king for me. I will never set foot in England again."

And he had promised her that he would make no pact with the rebels

unless she had first approved.

A light cloud passed over the sun, the sparkle died from the river,

the glow from the sky, the warm tremble of light from the trees; and

as Charles looked other clouds came up, in stately battalions, and

darkened the whole west.

Lord Digby returned.

"No messenger, sire," he said, "no letters."

"I did know it," replied Charles, with a smile that cast scorn on

himself; "but I am my own fool, and beguile the time with mine own

follies."

CHAPTER III

LIEUT.-GENERAL CROMWELL, ROYALIST

"Thou goest too often to Hampton Court," said Major Harrison. "I say it

to thy face."

"Thou mayst say it before any man," returned Cromwell mildly, "and do

no harm."

"If you will have any influence with the army you will go no more,"

continued Harrison.

"Ay!" said Cromwell, with the same patience; "but I think neither of my

influence with the army nor of any other thing, friends, but of what

the Lord hath put it in my heart to do for His service and the peace of

these times."

So saying, he laid down a little manual of gun drill, the pages of

which he had been turning over, and relit his pipe.

The scene was the guard-room of the army's headquarters at Putney.

Cromwell had been to London that morning to see his family, who were

now established in a mansion in Drury Lane, and his buff coat and his

falling boots were still dusty with the dust of the return ride.

Fairfax was in the room and the preacher, Hugh Peters. The bolder

Harrison voiced their opinions when he told Cromwell that he was

becoming too intimate with the King and too firm a supporter of the

royal pretensions; but Fairfax, from a natural reserve, and Peters,

because he hoped the Lieutenant-General would make an adequate defence,

were silent.

"Little did I ever think," cried Harrison, pacing heavily about the

room, "that thou wouldst become the consort of tyrants, the frequenter

of the strange children, whose mouth talketh of vanity, and whose right

hand is a hand of iniquity!"

Cromwell raised his calm eyes from his long clay pipe.

"No man will enjoy his possessions in peace until the King hath his

rights again," he said, "and I make no disguise from you nor from any

that I am doing my utmost to bring about a good peace with His Majesty.

For what other reason did any of us take up arms?"

"Ay," assented Sir Thomas Fairfax hastily, "and the Parliament and the

city of London are pressing for a settlement."

"My visits to Hampton Palace," continued Cromwell, "and my communings

with the King have had this one object--a good peace."

"If thou canst bring Charles Stewart to a good peace--_and make him

keep it_--thou hast more than mortal skill," said Harrison.

"What wouldst thou in this realm?" asked Cromwell, glancing up at him

with a gleam of humour. "A republic?"

The other three were silent at this; even among the extremists the idea

of totally abolishing the kingship was scarcely murmured.

"Well, then," said Cromwell, with a little smile, glancing round the

three silent faces, "a treaty with the King is the only means to get

us out of our present imbroglio, is it not? Now we have conquered His

Majesty, we must make terms with him."

"You never will," cried Hugh Peters vehemently. "He is false and false,

unstable and creeping in his ways--even while you confer with him he is

arranging to bring in the Scots again or murdering Papists from Ireland

or the French!"

"How do you know?" asked the Lieutenant-General, turning sharply in his

chair.

Mr. Peters glanced at Major Harrison, who replied--

"It is true that I have my finger in some plots the King hath in

hand. His agents meet at the Blue Boar in Holborn, and he hath a whole

service of secret couriers travelling between England, the Scots, and

France. As yet I have no letters, no absolute proofs in my possession,

but I do not think to lack them long."

"Have you long known of this, Sir Thomas?" asked Cromwell, rising.

"A week or so," replied the General; "but I have not given it overmuch

attention. If one listened to all the rumours of plots one's brain

would be confounded."

"I have men in disguise at the Blue Boar," said Harrison stubbornly,

"and soon I hope to prove my suspicions correct."

"Why, if they are," said Cromwell calmly, "then I shall change my

policy."

"Thou art all of a fatalist," remarked Harrison grimly; "there is no

ruffling thee."

The Lieutenant-General picked up his gloves and hat and riding-stock.

"Can I alter God's decrees that I should fret because of them?" he

answered earnestly. "I am but the flail in the hand of the thresher.

The Lord's will be done on me and on His Majesty, who are both the

instruments of His unsearchable judgments on these lands."

He saluted the General respectfully, but left without further speech.

He might call himself the instrument of the Lord: it was clear that he

did not consider himself the instrument of Sir Thomas Fairfax.

He seemed, indeed, quietly but fully conscious that he and he alone

could move the army (which at present still held the balance of power),

and that he, therefore, and no other was become the arbiter of these

realms.

When he left the guard-room he sent his servant for his son-in-law,

Henry Ireton, who soon joined him; the two mounted and, through the

October sun, rode to Hampton Court.

They exchanged little conversation on the way, partly because each

thoroughly understood the other, and partly because their minds were

full of busy thoughts.

The King, who was still treated with formality and respect, with his

own servants and his own friends about him, made no delay in seeing

them. He had lately had several interviews with Cromwell, with Fairfax,

with Ireton, and walking about Wolsey's groves and alleys had discussed

with them, through more than one summer and autumn afternoon, the

prospects before England.

It was in the garden, in one of the beautiful walks of yellowing oak

and beech that sloped to the river, that he received them now.

As usual his manner was gentle and gracious, as usual he kept his seat

(he was resting on a wooden bench) and did not uncover, though the two

Generals doffed their hats: power still paid this respect to tradition.

"Sir," said Cromwell at once, "I should have waited on you sooner, but

I have been sick of an imposthume in the head. But now I am here I have

weighty matters to say, and I would have Your Majesty give a keen ear

to my words."

"Am I not ever," said Charles, with a faint smile, "attentive to your

words?"

"I know not," replied Cromwell, with his plain outspokenness. "I cannot

read the heart of Your Majesty," and he looked at him straightly.

With the tip of his cane Charles disturbed the first little dead gold

leaves which lay at his feet.

"Ah," he replied slowly, "so you have weighty things to say?"

He had long known that his conferences with the leaders of the

army must come to a crisis and a plain issue soon; it had not been

his purpose to force this moment until his plans were all smoothly

arranged, but now he was ready enough. As usual he had his points

clear, his feelings under command, as usual his manner was gentle,

contained, courteous, his mind alert and watchful; yet there was a

weariness in his face and voice that all his art could not disguise,

as he came again to the old wretched business of speaking his enemies

fair, as he once more engaged in the endless game of negotiation,

proposal and counter-proposal, which he never intended should come to

anything.

The keen eyes of Commissary-General Ireton detected the shudder of

reluctance, almost repulsion, which Charles so instantly repressed.

"We will be short, Your Majesty," he said, "and it is not our intention

to ask you for more audiences. The army doth not like our meeting. All

must be settled in this coming together."

Charles glanced up at the two men standing before him as John Pym had

stood before him once in another of his royal gardens--Pym was dead,

but his principles were alive indeed; Charles thought that if the old

Puritan was in any hell which allowed him a glimpse of the earth he

must be grinning derisively at this scene now.

"We have had," said Cromwell, not waiting for Charles to speak,

"conferences, rendezvous, councils of war, much running to and fro

between the army and the Parliament, many talks between ourselves and

Your Majesty. Surely this thing must come to an end. The country is

without a government, and many extreme and fanatic men do seize the

time to unsettle the mind of the vulgar with fierce, empty words."

He paused a moment, then added, looking at the King intently and

openly, and speaking with almost mournful seriousness--

"Your Majesty knows what the country must have--are you prepared to

grant us these desires?"

Charles looked at him with a steadiness equal to his own.

"And if I say I am?" he replied. "What then?"

Both men were speaking with a directness usually foreign to them.

"Then," said Cromwell, "you may be in Whitehall within the week, sir.

The army will escort you there."

Charles could hardly disguise the leap of exultation that shook his

heart at this splendid chance, which, after being dangled before him so

long, was at length definitely offered him.

"Sir," added the Lieutenant-General, "I make no disguise from you that

there are many in the army not of my mind--it is rumoured that Your

Majesty hath secret dealings with the Scots, the French, the Dutch----"

"If the English are loyal to me," replied Charles, "wherefore should

I need foreign aid? These tales fly like thistledown before the first

autumn wind--when we are in London, sir, I will listen to, and satisfy,

all demands."

"Is that a pledge?" demanded Cromwell. "Is Your Majesty sincere with

me?"

Charles rose.

"What have I to gain by insincerity?" he said; and again his cane

stirred the drifting shrivelled leaves.

"And I must speak my side," he added. "It is my wish to show you that

loyalty may bring more profit and honour than rebellion."

"What manner of profit?" asked Cromwell. "If you mean personal profit,

why, I am well enough." ('Ay, with my Lord Worchester's lands,' thought

Charles bitterly): "two of my wenches are wed, my eldest son is

settled, the younger making good progress, for my other little maids

and their mother I can provide--what more should I want? For Henry

Ireton I can say the same."

"Yet I can gild this honourable prosperity," replied the King. "When my

Lord Essex died, his title--his title died with him--you, methinks, are

of the first Earl's house----"

"Ah!" cried Cromwell sharply, and flushed all over his face and neck.

"Oliver Cromwell may take the rank of Thomas Cromwell, who was also the

terror and the help of a king," continued Charles, with smiling lips

and narrowed eyes.

The blood was still staining the Lieutenant-General's face; his

forehead was crimson up to the thick brown hair; he looked on the

ground in a fashion that was embarrassed, almost stricken.

'I have not offered enough,' thought Charles; aloud he said--

"When I am in Whitehall I will sign the patent, and then the Earl of

Essex may command me to further service."

Still Cromwell did not speak.

'Thou clod, dost thou not understand!' cried the King in his heart.

He spoke again.

"And thy son-in-law, Henry Ireton here--he also I would raise----"

Cromwell interrupted, but in a confused and stammering fashion.

"Sir--you have mistaken--I am no cadet of the first Earl of Essex's

family--nay--or so remote; it matters not--I never thought of it--this

was not what I came to speak of--yet what I would have said is gone

from me." His head fell on his breast despondently; he made a hopeless

little gesture with his gloved right hand. "Let it pass," he finished.

"For me," said Henry Ireton. "I would that Your Majesty had not spoken

of this."

Charles could not keep all scorn from his smile as he replied--

"We will discuss these things at Westminster."

Cromwell raised his head and gazed into the King's pale, composed face.

"I do ask Your Majesty," he said, and in his deep voice was a note of

intense appeal, "to be sincere with me."

"I am sincere with you, General Cromwell," replied Charles.

A light gust of wind shook the oak branches and more leaves drifted

downwards.

"To-morrow I will return with General Fairfax and some other

officers," said Cromwell, "with whom Your Majesty may finally speak."

He seemed about to take his leave, hesitated, then, as if a sudden

impulse had shaken him, he turned again and addressed Charles.

"Not for my sake," he said, "nor for any light reason--but for thy

soul's sake that when thou comest before the living God thou mayst have

no treachery or falsehood in the scale against thee, deal fairly with

me now. There thou shalt wear no crown to give thee courage, and no

courtier shall flatter thee--therefore, sir, bethink thee, and tell me

plainly if I may trust thee."

"I have said it," replied Charles.

For a second Cromwell was silent; then he and Ireton took a formal

leave and left the Palace grounds.

When they were mounted and clear of the iron gates and the stone lions,

Ireton spoke.

"Wilt thou put that man up in Whitehall again? See how his mind runs on

little things--he did offer us bribes as if we were soldiers deserting

for higher pay."

"That went to my soul," replied Cromwell simply. "I thought he took me

for an honest man--but it pleased the Lord to mortify me, and I must

not murmur. As for the King--yea, I will put him on his heights again,

for that is the only way to peace."

They rode silently until they came within sight of Putney, and there

they were met by Major Harrison, who, riding, came out of the village

and joined them at the village green.

"News," he said abruptly, with a grim smile and triumphant eyes--"news

from 'The Blue Boar.'"

"Ay?" replied Cromwell quietly.

Harrison turned his horse about and rode beside the others; the three

slowed to a walking pace.

"You had not left the guard-room ten minutes," said Harrison, "before

my man arrived from London, all in a reek. He had found and arrested

the King's secret messenger, and out of his saddle ripped these"--he

held up a packet of papers--"secret letters to the Queen," he added

triumphantly, "and as fatal as those papers captured after Naseby!"

Ireton gave a passionate exclamation, but Cromwell said--

"What is in them?"

"Much treason," replied Harrison succinctly. "He tells his wife he

will never make a peace with either army or Parliament, that he is

deluding both while he raises a force in Scotland and Ireland, in which

countries Hamilton and Ormonde intrigue for him. He begs her to get a

loan from the Pope to raise a foreign army--and he promises," added

Harrison dryly, "that, when he hath his day again, those two rebels,

Cromwell and Ireton, shall both be hanged."

"Doth he? doth he?" said Cromwell; he held out his hand and took the

papers.

One glance at their contents confirmed Harrison's summary--the whole

was in the King's known hand.

Oliver Cromwell turned his horse and rode back to Hampton Court.

CHAPTER IV

THE KING AT BAY

When Cromwell returned to the Palace the King had already gone to his

supper.

"I will wait," said the Lieutenant-General; and in the little room with

the linen-pattern carving in the grey-coloured walls, the portrait of

Mary Tudor, the red lacquer desk, and the oriel window, where he had

first spoken with Charles, he waited.

Between his buff coat and his shirt lay the packet of papers ripped

from the saddle of the secret messenger in the stables of "The Blue

Boar"--papers which Charles believed to be across the Channel by now.

Oliver Cromwell waited while nearly half an hour ticked away on the

dial of the gilt bracket clock, and then came Lord Digby to say that

His Majesty would not be disturbed again to-night; Charles had still

the unconquerable pride of royalty; he would not be summoned to meet

his enemies at any hour they chose to name; the state with which he was

still surrounded perhaps deluded him into thinking he could behave as

he had behaved at Whitehall.

If so, the veil of his dignity was now rent in such a way that it could

never be patched again; Cromwell, with a manner there was no mistaking,

the manner of the master, repeated his demand for an instant audience

of His Majesty.

Lord Digby withdrew, and five minutes later the Puritan soldier was

ushered into the old, now disused, state chamber of Henry VIII, hung

with fine Flemish tapestries representing the 'Seven deadly Sins' and

lit by mullioned windows looking on the Park.

Charles was already there, walking up and down; he had changed his

dress since Cromwell had left him, and now wore black velvet with

cherry-coloured points and gold tags; his fingers played nervously with

the long gold chain which thrice circled his chest.

In the light, already slightly dim, of the large room, the grey look

of his face and hair was more apparent; it was almost as if some faded

carving had been joined to a living body, so extraordinarily lifeless

and without light was that immobile face framed in the long, waving,

colourless locks.

But in the eyes, swollen and lined, an intense vitality gleamed; the

dark pupils sparkled with force and emotion under the tired, drooping

lids as Charles stopped in his pacing and turned about to face Cromwell.

"I had not expected this," he said, with a haughtiness which seemed

to disguise some straining passion. "What more have we to say, sir?

Methought you were to come to-morrow."

"To-morrow might have been too late," said Cromwell. He spoke in his

usual quiet, almost melancholy, fashion; his heavy voice held the usual

deep note, enthusiastic, mournful.

He stood bareheaded, in his dusty leathers and silk scarf, his falling

boots, soiled spurs, and plain tuck sword, his head a little drooping,

his tanned face reddish from the ride through the autumn air.

Behind him the Gothic figures on the tapestry twisted and glowed

through branches and sprays of flowers and a luxurious profusion of

rare birds and uncouth beasts.

"Too late for what?" asked Charles, still endeavouring to conciliate

his powerful foe, and now, he hoped, ally, still barely able to conceal

his angry pride at the lack of ceremony with which he was treated,

the manner in which this man came before him, his great disgust and

repulsion at having to deal with such fellows at all.

"Get you gone to-night from Hampton, sir," said Cromwell, "to whatever

place seems good--here you shall no longer be safe."

"Ah," cried Charles, "is this the end of all your wily advances? I am

not safe!"

"Because I cannot protect you when what Major Harrison knows is spread

abroad among the army."

The King's right hand left his chain; he pressed his fingers over his

heart; on the black velvet they looked thin and white beyond nature.

"The hand of God is against you," said Cromwell sombrely. "He does not

mean that you shall again rule in this land. I would have made treaty

with you as the Gibeonites made with David--and I would not ask from

you the lives of seven, as they asked for the sons of Saul, but only

your own word pledged openly. But you could not keep it, but dealt with

the children of Belial and all the array of the ungodly."

Charles took one delicate step backwards.

"These are mighty words," he said.

"They are mighty doings," replied Cromwell. "Not of mean things or

small things or the things concerning one man or another am I speaking,

but of great things, the displeasure of God on this wretched land, the

means we must take to revoke His judgment.... Much blood hath been

shed," he added, with a sudden flash in his voice, "but not that which

must be before we find peace."

"I know not of what you speak," muttered the King.

"You very well know," replied Cromwell, and through the obscure web of

his words a meaning of passion, of force and fire did gleam, like gold

or flame. "You know what you have done. How you have deceived and gone

crookedly. But God is not mocked. Hath He not said, 'Though they dig

into Hell thence shall mine hand take them, though they climb up into

Heaven thence shall I pull them down'? And out of darkness and secrecy

hath He revealed your designs that you may not bring more evil upon

England."

"Of what dost thou accuse the King?" asked Charles.

"Of high treason," replied Cromwell--"of treason towards God and

England."

A step farther back moved Charles, so that his shoulders touched and

ruffled the tapestry.

"By what authority do you use this boldness?" he asked.

"My authority is from within," answered the Puritan. "I can satisfy

men of my authority. I am not afraid. I see that in treating with you

I have committed folly, but that is over. God will find another way.

Get from Hampton, under what excuse you may. I would not, sir, have the

army do you a mischief."

"I will," replied Charles, "get as far as may be from the violence of

insulting rebels--I will withdraw myself from my subjects until they

remember their duty to their King."

"In what way," demanded Cromwell, "hast thou fulfilled thy duty to God

or to His people?"

"I have endured much!" cried Charles, in a sharp voice. "But till now I

have been spared open insolence!"

Unmoved and unblenching the Lieutenant-General regarded him.

"Sir," he replied, "you may yet hear worse words than any I have

said, and may have to bear a rougher speech. I did not come to rail,

but to tell you that I am now persuaded there can be no treaty or

understanding between you and us. Sir, others advised me of this

awhile ago, but I would not listen. But now the hand of God is plainly

discoverable--your plots and subterfuges are revealed, sir, your secret

letters to the Queen are known."

Charles, whose quick mind had been reviewing all the possible disasters

that could have befallen, who had been wondering which of his intrigues

had been unveiled, was not prepared for a catastrophe so complete

as the discovery of his secret correspondence with his wife, which

revealed, not one, but all of his complicated plots.

As Cromwell told him at last the cause of his sudden estrangement, he

felt at once a shock and a premonition chill his heart; he remembered

quite clearly what had been in his last letter to the Queen, and the

statement that he had made in his irritation and humiliation regarding

Cromwell and Ireton, and he saw that another golden chance had gone,

and that he had lost for ever the help of the army which he had

sacrificed so much pride to gain.

But he faced this misfortune as he had faced so many others, with

unfailing courage and dignity.

"You pretend to deal with me as your king," he said, "but you treat me

as your prisoner. I am spied upon, and my very letters opened.... There

is no more to be said."

Cromwell did not deny the charge, as he might well have done, since

Major Harrison, and not he, had tracked and arrested the King's

messenger.

"My hopes of you are dead," he merely said. "I would have you leave

Hampton, for I know not what the army may do, and if they take you to

Whitehall now, sir, it will not be as a king, but as a prisoner."

"I am well used to that treatment," replied Charles, with hot

bitterness, "nor have I looked for any other at the hands of rebellious

fanatics. Didst thou think," he added, with the full force of that fury

and scorn he had so long concealed breaking the bounds of his fitful

prudence and his steady courtesy, "that _I_ ever regarded _thee_ as my

friend?"

"I would have been so, sincerely," replied Cromwell, with his

unruffled, melancholy calm. "I and Ireton risked our prestige with the

army to make conferences and debates with you, but it hath been as if

one should pour water into a sieve. I would have overlooked much--even

the insult you put on me to-day when you tried to buy me with a feather

for my cap, when I was offering myself to you with no thought but the

good of this realm. So cheaply did you hold Pym, so cheaply will you

always hold honest men, it seems--and I, sir, tell you plainly that I

have done with you. I will find other ways. Not through you can peace

come to England. I do now perceive it. 'Unstable as water, thou shalt

not excel.' You must go on to your fate, sir, as I shall to mine; but

look for no ally in me or in the army, for henceforth there can be no

treaty between Your Majesty and us. My cousin, Colonel Whalley, shall

remain here to look after your security; as for me, you shall not see

me again, or in a manner very different. As for what may become of you

or your estate, of that I wash my hands of--the Lord deal with you."

"Amen," said Charles sternly, "and may He judge between you and me.

Between me who have kept His ancient statutes and upheld His Church,

and you who have defied and blasphemed both."

"God is neither in statutes nor in churches," replied Cromwell, "but

in the innermost recesses of the spirits and the secret depths of

the heart, and these sanctuaries have you polluted and defiled, with

tyranny and falseness and sly and untruthful dealing."

He took a step towards the door; a sudden weariness seemed to have

overtaken him, or a wave of the weakness from his recent illness; he

looked, in his dusty clothes, like a rider beaten with fatigue, a

traveller exhausted after a long journey, his chin sank on his linen

collar; his broad shoulders were bowed, and his step was at once heavy

and uncertain.

Charles remained white, rigid in pose and expression as when Cromwell

entered the chamber; the shadows were swiftly closing round them and

all sharp lines and fine colours were blurred; through the one open

window a breeze came, which lightly stirred the dusty tapestry and

shook it in faint ripples from top to bottom.

The disused, unfurnished chamber, built for pomp and magnificence, was

unutterably mournful and dreary, a fitting setting for the unfortunate

King whose black figure was lost in, and one with, the ancient arras.

When he had reached the door, Cromwell turned and spoke again.

"Thou hast, sir, lost as good a chance as we are ever like to get of

a fair settlement, and lost it through falseness and folly." He spoke

with passion, but it was a passion of regret, not of vexation or wrath.

"A good night."

The King, without turning his head or moving, stood as if he dismissed

an unwelcome suitor from an audience, he showed an indifference that

was stronger than contempt and an insulting coolness and absence of

passion.

So, with no other word on either side, they parted, and Oliver rode

back to Putney, weary with disappointment and chagrin, though his

inmost prescience knew, and had known, that this disappointment and

chagrin had been from the first foredoomed, that in ever dealing with

the King at all he had been preparing the failure that had disclosed

itself to-night; as he reflected on the whole business, his stern

common sense laughed at the idealism which had led him astray; how

could he have ever hoped to have clipped a king to _his_ pattern out of

Charles?

The delusion was over; he asked himself, as he rode through the fresh

autumn twilight, what was to take its place?

If the King could not be trusted--what then? Some of the bold words

of Thomas Harrison flashed into his mind. Must they, could they, do

without a king at all?

Oliver Cromwell did not think so; he was never a Republican: order

and system were lovely to him, and both were involved, in his English

heart, with the idea of a steadfast though constrained monarchy.

In anything else (where, indeed, was the model for anything else to be

found in Europe, save perhaps in the peculiar constitution, founded

under peculiar circumstances, of the United Provinces?) he foresaw the

elements of constant anarchy, constant revolution....

Yet he had done with the King--finished with him with that complete

definiteness of which his resolutions were supremely capable.

So Cromwell strove with his thoughts during the short ride to Putney

where all the chiefs of the army were already in conclave.

Alone in the uncared-for splendour of another monarch the unhappy King

stood, motionless, as his enemy had left him, and tried to measure the

extent of his misfortune and to readjust his shattered plans.

He was still, as ever, incredulous of his ultimate defeat, but never

before had he been so utterly at a loss for present action. The army

was lost to him, that was clear; neither the Scots nor the Parliament

were ready to receive him, the Queen had not been able to raise the

foreign army, his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, had been prevented

by the States-General from sending troops to his assistance, Ormonde

could do nothing in Ireland--that country was indeed lost to the

royal cause, since the miserable affair of the Earl of Glamorgan--and

Hamilton seemed powerless to fight the Campbell faction at Edinburgh.

"What shall I do?" muttered Charles. "What shall I do?"

His thoughts turned with even deeper longing than usual to the Queen

in her exile; he believed that he might forsake everything and go to

her; two things restrained him, sheer pride and the thought of his two

children, the Princess Elisabeth and the Duke of Gloucester, who were

in the hands of the Parliament and whom he would have to leave behind.

The Duke of York had already escaped to France, but the figures of

these little children rose up and restrained his flight.

Besides, he must stand by his crown ... but he would not stay at

Hampton--his own enemy had warned him.

But where to go--in all my three realms where to go?

Several days he waited in his usual indecision, then, miserable,

harassed, uncertain, torn by a thousand perplexities, he and his few

companions crept one night down the back stairs, came out on to the

riverside, and went forth aimlessly, with no plan nor purpose, with

nothing but schemes as wild as will-o'-the-wisps to light the dimness

and confusions of their future.

CHAPTER V

LIEUT.-GENERAL CROMWELL, REPUBLICAN

In a room of the house where Oliver Cromwell had moved his family from

Ely, a mansion in Drury Lane, one of the least pretentious in that

fashionable street, but stately and comfortable, two women were sitting

over the ruddy fire which lit and cheered the close of the short winter

day.

The contrast between them was as marked as any contrast could be,

yet something in their personalities knit together and blended as if

beneath their great differences there was an underlying likeness--the

likeness of the same breed and birth.

The elder lady was towards the close of life--eighty, perhaps, or more;

her face and person were delicate, her lap full of delicate embroidery,

out of which her fine fingers drew a fine needle and thread.

She wore a grey tabinet gown; a white cap and white strings enclosed

her fragile face, white linen enfolded her shoulders and bosom, and

long white cuffs reached from her wrist to her elbow.

A housewife's case and a small Bible hung by cords to her waist; she

had nothing of gold or silver but her worn wedding ring, yet she gave

the impression of something high and fine and aristocratic.

She sat in a deep, cushioned chair with a hooded top; the failing light

had baffled the eyes that were still so keen, and the needlework was

dropped on her lap.

At her feet, on a small footstool, sat her grandchild, she who had

brightened the house at Ely with her balls of holly berries, her red

ribbons, her laughter, and her songs, and who now brightened the finer

town house when she visited there; she was no longer an inmate of her

father's home, for, though only seventeen, Elisabeth was a year married

and now Mrs. Claypole.

Neither in dress nor manner was she a Puritan; her lavender-blue silk

gown, flowing open on a lemon-coloured petticoat, her deep falling

collar and cuffs of Flemish lace, the bow of rose colour at her breast

and in her hair, her white sarcenet shoes with the silver buckles, the

long ringlets which escaped the pearl comb and fell on her shoulders,

even her piquant bright face, with eyes slightly languishing and mouth

slightly wilful, seemed more to belong to the now exiled court of

Henriette Marie than to the household of the leader of the Roundhead

army.

Yet there was nothing frivolous in the appearance of Elisabeth

Claypole; her prettiness had a pensive cast, her glance often a

seriousness unusual for her age, and if she sometimes showed a pride,

a vanity, or an impatience, impossible to her sweetly austere sister,

Bridget Ireton, she was not less noble and pious, brave and good, and

perhaps her deeper tenderness, her greater gaiety, her warmer love of

life were not such sins in the eyes of the God whom she had always been

taught to fear; yet sins her father called them, though he knew they

made her lovable, though he found her sweeter than Bridget, who was

gentle perfection.

Sitting here now, in the closing day, with the firelight flushing her

delicate clothes and her sensitive face, and the shadows encroaching

on her hair, here, with the cheerful noises of London without and the

cheerful atmosphere of home within, she talked to her grandmother of

the one subject every one must talk of this wondrous winter--the King's

bewildered flight from Hampton, his aimless two days' riding, his final

turning to the Isle of Wight and giving himself up to the Governor

there, Colonel Hammond, whom he had reason to believe was loyalist at

heart.

Yet here again the King had been, as ever, unfortunate; Robert Hammond,

tempted at first to take the King where he wished, yet remained true

to his trust, and the unhappy Stewart was again a prisoner, now at

Carisbrooke, kept more strictly than before--and a portentous silence

hung over the nation; English, Scots, Presbyterians, Independents,

Parliamentarians, the army, the Royalists--all seemed waiting--"Waiting

for what?" asked Elisabeth Claypole, voicing the question England was

asking.

"For the Lord to show His will towards this poor kingdom," said Mrs.

Cromwell simply. "Surely He will dispose it all to mercy."

"Mercy?" repeated the young girl thoughtfully. "I see little mercy

abroad. Much blood and bitterness--but no mercy."

"At least," said the old gentlewoman composedly, "His Majesty is mewed

up, and that should be a step towards the settlement of these tangled

affairs."

"Alas, poor King!" murmured the youngest Elisabeth (it was her mother

and her grandmother's name). "Alas! alas!"

"Why dost thou say alas?" asked Mrs. Cromwell calmly. "Dost thou not

recall what thy father said in the House the other day when he moved

that no more addresses should be sent to the King, nor any dealings

made with him, under pain of high treason? He put his hand on his

sword, thy father did, and he said, quoting Holy Writ--'Thou shalt not

suffer a hypocrite to reign----'"

"He said not so much a month ago," replied Elisabeth; "then he was

all for a good peace with His Majesty, saying--how could any man come

quietly to his own save by that?"

"Thou knowest," returned the old lady, who had much of the strength and

melancholy of her son in her calm demeanour, "that all that is changed."

"Will there be another war?" murmured Elisabeth Claypole, looking

dreamily into the fire.

"That is a matter for men.... Be not so grave, dear heart, the Lord

hath us all in His keeping."

"My father," replied the girl, "hath been grave of late--during all my

visit. He thinketh affairs are dark, I believe."

"Not only affairs of the kingdom weigh on him, Elisabeth--something his

own do oppress him. The Parliament settlements are yet indefinite, and

then there is your brother Richard's marriage. It does not please your

father that he should be so deep in love as to leave the Life Guards.

And then this Dorothea Mayor's father requireth settlements, hard for

your father to give as things now stand--all this weighs with him and

puts him in anxieties and silences."

At the end of this speech, Mrs. Cromwell, either exhausted from so

many words or from the thoughts her own explanation had conjured up,

sighed and leant back in her chair, dropping her chin on the immaculate

whiteness of her cambric bosom, as her son would sink his on his breast

when he was thoughtful or oppressed.

"Richard," said Elisabeth Claypole in that soft, eager voice which was

always ready to plead for and to praise every one, "is not suited for

the army--he never cared for it."

"Cannot you see," replied Elisabeth Cromwell almost sharply, "what a

disappointment that is for your father?"

"He loveth Oliver," whispered Oliver's sister, and her eyes swam in

tears. "Oliver would have been a good soldier."

"He loved Robert more," returned the grandmother. "Robert was the

first born. His eldest son. Richard could never be as either Robert or

Oliver to him; yet he will be loving and just to Richard." That sense

of the presence of the dead that the hushed mention of them seems to so

often evoke, as if they were never far, and at the sound of love and

regret hovered near, filled the darkening room. Both the grandmother

and sister seemed to see the bright ardent figure of the young cornet,

whose life had burst forth so fiercely into action amid the whirling

events of war, and had been stilled so suddenly by a hideous disease

in an insignificant garrison, and was now forgotten save by these one

or two who had loved him.

Elisabeth Claypole remembered; she remembered his excitement, their

mother's instructions, the cordials and balms he had taken with him,

the fine shirts she had helped stitch and pack, his new sword that had

looked so big to her childish eyes--the farewells--the letters....

Elisabeth Cromwell remembered; she remembered his farewell visit, how

she had blessed him and he had knelt before her with her hand on his

smooth fair head ... and his tallness and straightness and slenderness,

and all his bright new bravery of war array....

"Ah well," she said softly. "Ah well," and her mind wandered off to her

own youth, and it seemed to her as if she had indeed been living a long

time ... almost too long.

"Light the candles, my love, my dear," she said. "It is sad to sit in

the dark."

As her granddaughter rose, the door opened and Oliver Cromwell entered.

His coming was a surprise; he was not now often in London, save when he

had to speak at Westminster. He had lately been at Hereford, and they

had not expected his return so soon.

The sincere warmth of his welcome might have pleased any man, however

weary, and his gravity lifted under it for a while, but when he had

kissed them both and come to the fire and warmed his hands, silence

came over him, as if the melancholy had closed over and clouded him

again. His mother, from her hooded chair, gazed at his powerful, yet

drooping figure, and the presence of the younger Oliver seemed more

insistent.

Elisabeth Claypole had gone to fetch the candles.

"We were speaking of Oliver," said Mrs. Cromwell.

Her son turned to look down at her.

"He is with the Lord," he answered gravely. "He was a man--and took a

man's fate doing man's work."

A little fall of silence, then Cromwell spoke again--

"Do you think of Robert sometimes, mother?"

"I knew, I knew," murmured the old gentlewoman. "He was your love."

"He was a child," replied Cromwell, with infinite tenderness, with

infinite regret. "A little, useless child. Dying so, he remains a

child--never higher than my shoulder. My eldest born. Oliver laughed

when he did go, for joy to die in God's service, but Robert wept. Ay,

they at Felsted told me he wept because I was not there to take his

hand in the sharpness of his passing. Oh, that went to my heart, my

innermost heart ... but God saved me."

The young Elisabeth returned, followed by the servant with the two

branched candlesticks of brass which stood on the black polished table,

where they reflected their full shining length.

With a shudder the Lieutenant-General roused himself and turned to face

the room.

"What hast thou been doing?" asked Elisabeth Claypole when the maid had

gone.

"It would not please thee to know," he answered sombrely.

Now the room was lit she noticed his pallor, his heavy air.

"Thou art tired, father," she cried.

"Ay--tired--tired--bring me a glass of wine, dearest." He turned round

again to the fire and said abruptly, "There hath been a mutiny in

the army. A rebellious meeting at Corkbush field--these levellers it

was--but I did stamp it out; we must have no disaffection in the army."

"A meeting?" exclaimed his daughter, taking a bell-mouthed glass from

the sideboard; "but it is ended--how?"

"They drew lots," replied Cromwell, "and one was shot. One Arnald--a

brave man."

"Oh, father!" cried Mrs. Claypole. "More blood--more misery!"

"It had to be," said Cromwell. "Dost thou think I love it?" He made an

effort to shake off his preoccupation and his gloom, "Come, come, this

is no news for thee."

He turned again to gaze very tenderly at her as she came with wine on a

silver salver.

"Oh, vanity and carnal mind!" he cried, pulling at the ribbons on her

sleeve; "thy sister Ireton doth think that thou art too much given to

worldliness! Yet seek ye the Lord and ye shall find Him," he added,

with a sudden grave smile.

"Sir, I would," she replied earnestly. "Let not my ways deceive you, I

am very humble at heart."

"I do believe it," he said.

He drank his wine slowly. He asked where his wife was (he had learnt

below that she was abroad), and was told that she was with Lady Wharton.

"She did not expect me," he said half-wistfully. "I wish that I had

chanced to find her. Since I am so much away I would have all round me

when I am at home."

"She will be in soon," said his mother, gathering up her fine sewing

with an air of regret, for the candlelight was not strong enough for

her to see the minute stitches.

Elisabeth crept up to her father, and taking his sword hand, caressed

it.

"What of the King?" she asked.

"The King is at Carisbrooke," he replied.

She gave a deep sigh.

"How will it end, my father?"

"How should we have that knowledge yet?"

"The poor King!" she exclaimed. "I am sorry for the poor King!"

Cromwell was silent.