the Parliament would scorn him.
Through the entanglement of his bitter and humiliating reflections, he became aware of the sound of the persistent, low sobbing of the Queen in the darkening room behind him, and he turned, letting the curtains fall together over the fading heavens, the brightening star, the oncoming storm.
The scanty light that now filled the chamber was only enough to let him discern the white blur of his wife's figure as she knelt before one of the brocade chairs with her dark head lost in the shadows and her hands upraised in a startling position of prayer.
Her sobs, even and continuous as the breaths of a peaceful sleeper, filled the rich chamber, the splendours of which were now gloomed over with shadow, with sorrow.
Presently, as he watched her, and as he listened, the grim sharpness of his anguish was melted into a weak grief at her distress; his impotency to protect her from tears became his main torment.
"Mary," he said, "Mary—it is over—think no more of it—go to bed and sleep in peace. London shall be content to-night."
He stumbled towards her, and she rose up swiftly and straightly, holding her rag of wet white handkerchief to her wet white face.
"Ah, Charles!" she exclaimed, her voice thick from her weeping.
She held out her arms, he took her to his heart and bowed his shamed head on her shoulder; but after a very little while he put her away.
"Leave me now!"
"This thing must be done at once—to-night—I cannot tell how long they can hold the gates——"
"I must go out," said Charles, with utmost weariness; "get me a light, my dear, my beloved."
She found the flint and tinder and, with deftness and expedition, lit the lamp of crystal and silver gilt which stood on the King's private bureau.
As the soft, gracious flame illumined the room, the King, who was leaning against the tapestry like a sick man, looked at once towards the fatal paper and beside it the pen and ink dish ready.
The Queen stood waiting; her face was all blotted and swollen with weeping; she looked a frail and piteous figure; her youth seemed suddenly in one day dead, and her beauty already a thing of yesterday.
"It is well I love thee," said Charles, "otherwise what I do would make hell for me. Oh, if I had not loved thee, never, never would I have done this thing!"
"We shall forget it," answered the Queen, "and we shall live," she added, straining her hoarse voice to a note of passion, "to avenge ourselves."
She spoke to a man of a nature absolutely unforgiving, and at this moment her mention of vengeance came like comfort to his anguish and palliation of his baseness.
"I will never forget, I will never pardon," he swore, lifting up his hand towards heaven. "Never, never shall there be peace between me and Parliament until this shame is covered over with blood."
He snatched up the warrant with trembling hand.
"Send some lords to me," he cried. "I cannot sign this myself—get it done—bring this most hateful day to an end!"
He sank into the chair on which her tears had fallen, and stared at the paper clutched in his fingers as if it was a sight of horror.
Henriette Marie hastened away to tell the waiting deputies of the Houses that the King would pass the Bill, and as she went she heard a cry intense enough to have carried to the Tower where my lord sat waiting the news of his fate.
"Oh, Strafford! Strafford! my friend!"
CHAPTER VII
AUTUMN, 1641
"Things go too far and too fast for me, and though men speak of the progress we make, to me it seemeth more like a progress into calamities unspeakable."
The young man who spoke leant against the dark-blue and gold diapered wall of the antechamber to the House of Commons, in Westminster Hall; members and their friends were passing to and fro; in a few days the memorable and triumphant session would adjourn. The King was in Scotland, employed, as the Parliament well knew, in one of his innumerable intrigues, this time an endeavour to bring a Northern army into London. The Scots, since the imperfect peace he had patched with them, remained his chief hope. Mr. Hampden was in Edinburgh watching him, but Mr. Pym remained in London, the mainspring of the popular party.
It was late August of the year my Lord Strafford ("putting off my doublet as cheerfully now as I ever did when I went to my bed," he had said), had walked to his death on Tower Hill. Archbishop Laud was a prisoner, and the King had given his consent to a series of Acts which swept away those grievances which the people had complained of, and, most momentous of all, he had passed a law by which it was impossible for him to dissolve Parliament without its own consent.
Therefore it might seem that affairs had never been so bright and hopeful for the leaders of the reforming party, and yet this young gentleman, leaning against the wall and staring at the pool of sunlight the Gothic window cast at his feet, spoke in a tone of melancholy and foreboding.
He had always been a close follower and friend of Pym and Hampden, and always ardent for the public good—one of the keen, swift spirits whose direct courage had helped the House to triumph, but now he stood dejected and rather in the attitude of one who has suffered defeat.
His companion, who was but a few years older, regarded him with a thoughtful air, then glanced dubiously at the crowds which filled the chamber and from which they, in the corner by the window, stood a little apart.
"I take your meaning," he replied, after a considerable pause. "I see a bigger cleavage between King and people than I, for one, ever meant there to be, and prospects of a division in this nation which will be a long while healing."
He bent his gaze on the other side of the chamber where Mr. Pym and Mr. Cromwell were talking loudly and at great length together.
If any casual observer had looked in at this assembly, assuredly it would have been this man by the window at whom they would have glanced longest and oftenest.
His appearance would have been noticeable in any gathering, for it was one of the most unusual beauty and charm.
He was no more than thirty years of age, and the delicate smoothness of his countenance was such as belongs to even earlier years, and gave him, indeed, an air of almost feminine refinement and gentleness; his long love-locks were pale brown, his heavy-lidded eyes of a soft and changeable grey, and the expression of his lips, set firmly under the slight shade of the fashionable moustaches, was one of great sweetness.
The whole expression of his face was a tenderness and purity seldom seen in masculine traits; yet in no way did he appear weak, and his bearing showed energy and resolution.
His dress, of an olive green, was carefully enriched with rough gold embroidery, and his linen, laces, and other appointments were of a finer quality than those worn by the other gentlemen there.
Such was Lucius Carey, my Lord Viscount Falkland, one of the noblest, in degree and soul, of those who had combined to curb and confine the tyranny of the King.
His companion was Mr. Edward Hyde, an ordinary looking blonde gentleman, inclined to stoutness, and a prominent member of the more moderate section of the dominant Commons.
He followed the direction of the Viscount's gaze and remarked, in a low tone—
"Those two are getting matters very much into their own hands, and Mr. Cromwell, at least, is too extreme."
"What more do they want?" asked my Lord Falkland. "The King hath redressed the grievances we laboured under. They strained the very utmost of the law (nay, more than the law) on the Earl of Strafford, and to push