"And Prince Rupert?"
"Is a dream from which I have awakened."
"But he may still be dreaming."
"Rupert has many faults, but he is a man of honour. My marriage to Cymlin will be a barrier sacred to both of us. Our friendship can hold itself above endearments. You need not fear for Cymlin; Matilda de Wick will honour her husband, whether she obeys him or not. Cymlin is formed for power and splendour, and he will stand near the throne."
"If there be a throne."
"Of that, who now doubts? Cromwell is falling sick, and you may feel 'God save the King' in the air. If you had married Stephen, he would have been alive to join in the cry. I could weep at your obstinacy, Jane."
"Let it pass, dear. I was suckled on Puritan milk. Stephen and I never could have been one. My fate was to go to the New World. When I was a little child I dreamed of it, saw it in visions before I knew that it existed. Stephen has escaped this sorrowful world and – "
"Oh, then, I would he were here! This sorrowful world with Stephen in it was a better world than it is without him. Jane, Jane, how he loved you!"
"And I loved him, as a companion, friend, brother, if you will. When you lay his body in de Wick, cast a tear and a flower on his coffin for me. God give him peace!"
At length their "farewell" came. Jane dreaded it; she was sure Matilda would wear emotion to shreds and exhaustion. But it was not so. She wept, but she was solemnly silent; and the last words between them were soft and whispered, and only those sad, loving monosyllables which are more eloquent than the most fervid protestations. And so they parted, forever in this life, – and if this life were all, Death would indeed be the Conqueror. But it is not all; even through the death struggle, the Soul carries high her cup of Love, unspilled.
The next afternoon Jane and Cluny rode through London streets for the last time. They were full of busy, happy people, and mingling with them all the bravery and splendid show of the great company of courtiers that were in the train of Mazarin's two nephews, the Duke of Crequin and Monsieur Mancini; Ambassadors from the King of France to congratulate Cromwell – "the most invincible of sovereigns, the greatest and happiest of princes – " on the surrender of Dunkirk.
And Jane on the previous day had heard this "most invincible of sovereigns, the greatest and happiest of princes," declare that "he was weak and weary; that all the waves and billows of a sea of troubles had gone over him," and with tears and outstretched hands entreat his God to "give him rest from his sorrow and from his fear, and from the hard bondage wherein he had been called to serve."
On the ship they found Jane's father, Doctor Verity and Sir Thomas Jevery. There were no tears at this parting, nor any signs of sorrow; every one seemed resolved to regard it as a happy and hopeful event. For, though not spoken of, there was a firm belief and promise of a meeting again in the future not very far off. Israel held his little daughter to his heart, and then laid her hand in Cluny's without a word; the charge was understood. The young husband kissed the hand, and clasped it within his own, and his eyes answered the loving father in a language beyond deception. When the last few minutes came, and the men were trooping to the anchor, Doctor Verity raised his hands, and the three or four in the dim, small cabin knelt around him; and so their farewell was a prayer, and their parting a blessing.
Israel and Doctor Verity walked away together, and for a mile neither of them spoke a word. There is a time for speech and a time to refrain from speech, and both men were in the House of Silence for strength, each finding it in his own individual way. As they came near to Sandy's, however, Israel said,
"It is a short farewell, John. It will be my turn next."
"I shall go when you go."
"To the Massachusetts Colony?"
"Yes. I am ready to go when the time comes."
"It is not far off."
"A few months at the longest."
"He is very ill?"
"The foundations of his life are shaken, for he lives not in his power or his fame, or even in the work set him to do. No, no, Oliver lives in his feelings. They are at the bottom of his nature; all else is superstructure. And they have been rent and torn and shaken till the man, strong as he is, trembles in every limb. And Fairfax, as well as Lambert and others, think they can fill great Oliver's place! – no man can."
"For that very reason, when he departs, I will away from England. I have no heart for another civil war. I will draw sword under no less a general than Oliver."
"As I said, I go with you. I have some land, and a little home there already; and Mistress Adair has promised to marry me. She is a good woman, and not without some comeliness of person."
"She is a very handsome woman, and I think surely she will make you a good wife. You have done well. Did you tell Jane this?"
"Yes, I told her."
"My heart is heavy for England."
"She knows not the day of her visitation any better than Jerusalem did."
"She will bring back the Stuarts?"
"That is what Monk, and others with him, are after. They have been at the ears of the army, din, din, din, until their lies against Oliver have been sucked in. They have a rancorous jealousy that never sleeps, and no one can please them that is above them, whether it be Prince, Protector or God. Envy has pursued Oliver like a bird of prey. Its talons, at last, are in his heart."
"Good-night, John."
"Good-night, Israel. Have you told Martha?"
"Not yet. She will fret every day till the change comes. Why should we have a hundred frets, when a dozen may do?"
But when Israel went into Martha's presence something made him change his mind. The mother had been weeping, and began to weep afresh when she saw her husband. He anticipated her sorrowful questions, and with an assumption of cheerfulness, told her what a good, brave man the captain of the ship was, and how happy and hopeful Jane and Cluny seemed to be. "It did not feel like a parting at all, Martha," he said; "and indeed there was no need for any such feeling. We are going ourselves very soon, now."
The words were spoken and could not be recalled; and he stood, in a moment, ready to face the storm they might raise. He had not intended them, but what we say and what we do beyond our intention, is often more fateful and important than all our carefully prepared words or well laid plans. Martha looked at her husband with speechless wonder and distress, and he was more moved by this attitude than by her usual garrulous anger. He sat down by her side and took her hand, saying,
"My dear Martha, I did not think of telling you this just yet, and especially to-day, but the words were at my lips, and then they were out, without my leave or license. Now there is nothing for it, but letting you know, plump and plain, that you and I, in our gathering years, must up and out of England. Oliver Cromwell is dying; when he is in the grave, what? Either Stuart, or civil war. If it is the Stuart, my head will be wanted; and as for fighting for Lambert, or even Fairfax or Sir Harry Vane, I will not do it – verily, I will not! I have fought under Cromwell; I will fight under no less a general, and in no less a quarrel than he led in. That is settled. You said Martha, 'for better, or for worse.'"
She did not answer, and he dropped her hand and continued, "I will never force thee, Martha, not one step. If thou lovest England better than me – "
"I don't! I don't, Israel! I love nothing, I love nobody better than Israel Swaffham. I was thinking of Swaffham."
"I shall sign the sale of it to Cymlin as soon as Cromwell dies. The deed is already drawn out, and waiting for our names. If the Stuart comes back – and I believe he will – I should lose Swaffham, as well as my life; but Cymlin will marry Matilda, and make obeisance to Charles Stuart, and the old home will be in the family and keep its own name. I and thou can build another Swaffham; thou art but fifty, and my years are some short of sixty. We are in the prime of life yet."
"I am forty-eight, – not quite that, – Israel; and Swaffham was very up and down, and scarce a cupboard in it. I do miss my boys; and how I can bear life without Jane, I don't know. Wherever you go, Israel, I will go; your God is my God, and your country shall be mine."
"I was sure of that, Martha. God love you, dearest! And any country where your home is built, and your children dwell, is a good country; besides which, this New World is really a land of milk and honey and sunshine. Tonbert and Will could not be bought back here with an earldom. There is another thing, Martha, both of them are going to be married."
"Married! I never heard of such a thing."
"I thought I wouldn't tell thee, till needs be; but 'tis so, sure enough."
"And to what kind of women, Israel?"
"Good, fair women, they tell me; sisters, orphan daughters of the Rev. John Wilmot. Thou seest, then, Martha, there may soon be three families coming up, and not a grandmother among them to look after the children, or give advice to the young mothers. I don't see what Tonbert's wife, or Will's wife, or thy own daughter Jane can do without thee."
She shook her head slightly, but looked pleased and important. The wife and mother was now completely satisfied. And Martha Swaffham was blessed with imagination. She could dream of her new home, and new ties, and give herself, even in London streets, a Paradise in the unknown New World. And, at any rate, in the building of the American Swaffham she would take care that there were plenty of cupboards. Indeed, her plans and purposes were so many, and so much to her liking, that Israel was rather hampered by her expansive hopes and ideas; and though he did not damp her enthusiasm by telling her "she was reckoning without her host," he himself was quite sure there would be many trials and difficulties to tithe her anticipations.
"But it is bad business going into anticipation," he said to himself. "I'll let Martha build and arrange matters in her mind as she wants them; things will be all the likelier to happen so; I have noticed that time and time again. It will be a great water between us, and the sins and sorrows of six thousand years; and if there be a Paradise on earth, it will be where man hasn't had time to turn it into a – something worse."
So the summer days went on, and England had never been so serene and so secure in her strength and prosperity. Throughout the land the farmer was busy in his meadows making hay, and watching the green wheat blow yellow in the warm winds and sunshine. The shepherds were on the fells counting the ewes and their lambs; the traders busy in their shops; the ports full of entering and departing vessels, and the whole nation yet in a mood of triumph over the acquisition of Dunkirk. Cromwell was working feverishly, and suffering acutely. His favourite child, the Lady Elizabeth Claypole was still very ill; he had premonitions and visions of calamity that filled his heart with apprehension, and kept his soul always on the alert, watching, watching for its coming. It might be that he alone could meet it and ward it away from those he loved.
It is certain also that he knew the time for his own departure was at hand. He said to Doctor Verity, "I have one more fight, John. Dunbar was a great victory; Worcester was a greater one; but my next fight will give me the greatest victory of all – 'the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.' Do you understand?" And the Doctor made a movement of affirmation; he could not speak.
Wonderful was the labour the Protector now performed. He directed and settled the English affairs in France; he arranged the government of the new English plantations in Jamaica and the West Indies; and he paid particular attention to the needs and condition of the New England Colonies, being indeed their protector, and the only English protector they ever had. He took time to enunciate to France, more strongly than ever before, the rights of all the Protestants in Europe; and he made all preparations for calling another Parliament to consider, and settle more firmly, the business of the English Commonwealth. His work was a stupendous one, and through it all he showed constantly the feverish haste of a man who has a great task to perform and sees the sun dropping to the western horizon. But his heart bore the heaviest share of the heavy burden. It was as if Death knew that this man's soul could only be delivered from the flesh by attacking the citadels of feeling. In every domestic and social relation – son, husband, father, friend – the tenderness of his nature made him suffer; and when on the twenty-third of July Lady Claypole's illness showed fatal symptoms, he dropped all business, and for fourteen days and nights hardly left her presence. And her death on the sixth of August was a crushing and insupportable blow.
Lady Heneage, who was one of her attendants in these last terrible days, was removed in a fainting condition, when all was over, and taken to her old friend Martha Swaffham, for care and consolation. The two women had drifted apart during the past four years, but there was only love between them, and they reverted at once to their old affectionate familiarity. And such sorrow as that affecting Lady Heneage, is soon soothed by kind companionship and sympathetic conversation. She had much to tell that Martha Swaffham was eager to listen to, though the matter of all was suffering and death.
"The Lord Protector was really her nurse," she said. "When her mother fainted, and her husband and sisters could not look on her sufferings, her father held her in his arms, bore every pang with her and prayed, as I hope, Martha, I may never hear any one pray again. It was as if he clung to the very feet of God, entreating that he, and he alone, might bear the agony; that the cup of pain might pass from his child to him – and this for fourteen days, Martha. I know not how he – how we – endured it. We were all at the last point, when suddenly, a wonderful peace filled the chamber, and the poor Lady Elizabeth lay at ease, smiling at her father as he wiped the death sweat from her brow and whispered in her ear words which none but the dying heard. At the last moment, she tried to say, 'Father, but only managed one-half the word; the other half she took into heaven with her. It is now the sixth of August, is it not, Martha?"
"Yes."
"The Protector will not live long, I think. I heard him tell her they would not be parted a space worth counting."
"He would say that much for her comfort. He meant it not in respect of his own days; no life is a space worth counting – 'of few days and full of trouble, Alice.' How is her Highness, Elizabeth Cromwell?"
"Very quiet and resigned. Blow upon blow has benumbed her. She looks as if she had seen something not to be spoken of. Lady Mary Fanconberg says the family ought to leave Hampton Court; there is a feeling about the place both unhappy and unnatural. I felt it. Every one felt it, even the soldiers on guard."
After the death of his beloved daughter Elizabeth, the life of Cromwell was like the ending of one of those terrible Norse Sagas with the additional element of a great spiritual conflict. He was aware of his own apparition at his side; the air was full of omens; he felt the menace of some shadowy adversary in the dark; he saw visions; he dreamed beyond nature; he had, at times, the wild spirits of a fey man, and again was almost beside himself with unspeakable grief. Israel Swaffham was constantly with him. The two men were friends closer than brothers. They had loved each other when boys, and their love had never known a shadow.
"But I am in great trouble about him," said Israel to his wife. "It cannot last. Since Lady Claypole's death he eats not, drinks not, sleeps not; his strong, masculine handwriting, the very mirror of his courageous spirit, has become weak and trembling. He lives much alone, keeps from his family as if he feared they might be in danger from his danger. And he thinks and thinks, hour after hour; and 'tis thinking that is killing him. I can tell you one thing, Martha, a thinking soul is always sorrowful enough, but when it is a great soul like Oliver's, and it is wretched for any cause, then every thought draws blood."
"For such dismal thought and feeling there is the Holy Scriptures."
"Yes, yes, Oliver knows the Comforter, and sometimes there is a message for him. Last night he made Harvey read him the fourth of Philippians, and he said when he had listened to it, 'This Scripture did once save my life when my eldest son died, which went as a dagger to my heart, indeed it did;' then, with a great joy he repeated the words, 'I can do all things through Christ which strengthened! me;' adding, 'He that was Paul's Christ, is my Christ too!'"
Cromwell had hoped that his great afflictions would bring his friends back to his side; but envy, hatred and greedy ambition are not to be conciliated. Even at this time, Ludlow, Lambert, Vane, Harrison, Marten, – all the men whom he had trusted, and who had trusted him, stood aloof from his sorrow; and their sullen indifference wounded him to the quick. He had a burning fever both of the body and soul, but in two weeks he gathered a little strength and left Hampton Court for Whitehall. His unfinished work drove at him like a taskmaster. He must make great haste, for he knew that the night was coming.
"I am glad he is back in Whitehall," said Martha to her husband, when she heard of the change. "I remember something that Jane said about that old, gloomy Court; he will get better in London."
"I know not, Martha," answered Israel sadly; "Fairfax was with him to-day, and he might as well have drawn his sword on his old friend, – better and kinder had he done so."
"Fairfax is proud as Lucifer. What did he want?"
"The Duke of Buckingham has been sent to the Tower – where he ought to have been sent long ago; but he is married to the daughter of Fairfax, and the haughty Lord General went to see Cromwell about the matter. He met him in the gallery at Whitehall and asked that the order for Buckingham's arrest should be retracted. And Cromwell told him that if the offense were only against his own life, the Duke could go free that hour, but that he could not pardon plotters against the Commonwealth. It grieved him to the heart to say these words, and Fairfax saw how ill and how troubled he looked. But he had not one word of courtesy; he turned abruptly and cocked his hat, and threw his cloak under his arm in that insolent way he was ever used to when in his tempers. And Oliver looked at me like a man that has been struck in the face by a friend. Then he went to his desk and worked faithfully, inexorably, all day; – but – but – "
"But what, Israel?"
"It is near – the end."
Indeed, this interview with Fairfax seemed to be the last heart-weight he could carry. That night, the man who had been used to shelter his dove-like wife from every trouble in his strong heart, laid his head upon her shoulder and said pitifully, "O Elizabeth, I am the wretchedest creature! Speak some words of hope and peace to me." Then she soothed and comforted him from the deep wells of her tenderness, and never once put into words the fearful thought which lay deep in her heart – "What will become of me when he is gone?" But Oliver had this same anxious boding, and he managed that night to tell his wife that if God, in mercy, called him on the sudden, Israel Swaffham had his last words and advices for her, – words that would then be from Oliver in heaven to Elizabeth on earth. They spoke of their old, free, happy life; of their sons and daughters both here and there, and mingled for the last time their tears and prayers together.
"Let us trust yet in God, dear Oliver," she said, as they rose from their knees; "is He not sufficient?"
"Trust in God!" he cried. "Who else is there in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath? And as our John Milton says —
"'.. if this truth fail,
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble.'
Trust in God! Indeed I do! God has not yet spoken His last word to Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell." Then he drew her close to his heart, kissed her fondly, and said, almost with sobs, "My dearest, if I go the way of all the earth first, thou wilt never forget me?"
"How could I forget thee? How could I? Not in my life days! Not in my eternal days! Heart of my heart! My good, brave, true husband, Elizabeth will never forget thee, never cease to love thee and honour thee, while the Everlasting One is thy God and my God."
The next day he went to his desk and began to write, but speedily and urgently called for Israel Swaffham. When he answered the call, Oliver was in great physical agony, but he took some papers from a drawer and said, "When I am no longer here, Israel, give these to my wife. Thurloe has the key to all State questions; he knows my intents and my judgments on them. And there is one more charge for you: when all is over, speak to the army for me. Tell the men to remember me while they live. Truly, I think they will. Tell them I will take love and boldness to myself, and plead for them when I am nearer to God than I am now. It may be we shall serve together again – among the hosts of the Most High. Say to them my tears hinder my last words, as indeed they do. Now let me lean on you, Israel. I am going to my last hard fight."
When he reached his room, he stood a moment and looked wistfully round it. It was but a narrow chamber, but large enough for the awfully close, near conflict, that he had to fight in it, – a conflict which was to put asunder flesh and spirit, and within its few feet, with strange, strong pains deliver the Eternal out of Time, and set free his Immortal Self from the carnal prison-house of many woes in which he had suffered for more than fifty-nine years. For ten terrible days and nights the anguish of this struggle went on unceasingly, sometimes the great Combatant being "all here" and full of faith and courage, sometimes far down the shoal of life and reason, and wandering uneasily through bygone days of battle and distress and darkness. Then Israel held his burning hands, and listened, while in a voice very far off, he ejaculated such passages as had then been familiar to him: – "The shield of His mighty men is made red, the valiant men are in scarlet. The chariots shall rage in the streets – they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings."8 And once at the midnight when all was still he cried, "If the Lord had suffered it, then I had died on the battle-field as His Man of War, with tumult, with shouting and with the sound of the trumpet."9
He had turned to face his last enemy on the twenty-fourth of August, and on the thirtieth there was such a tempest as had never before been seen in England. Whole forests were laid on the ground; traffic was swept from the roads and the streets, and the ships from the stormy seas; and the tide at Deptford, to the dismay of the superstitious, threw up the carcass of a monstrous whale. The chambers of Whitehall were filled with the roar of the great winds. The guards leaned on their arms, praying or talking solemnly together on the prodigy of the storm.
"Michael and the devil had a dispute about the body of Moses," said one old grizzled trooper to his companion. "Are they fighting about our Cromwell, think ye, Abel?"
"Who knows?" was the answer. "The Prince of the Powers of the Air has His battalions out this night, but Michael and his host will be sufficient. You'll see, Jabez, when the storm is over, our Cromwell will go;" and he drew his hand across his eyes and added, "He'll have company, Jabez, a great bodyguard of ministering angels; and sure a soul needs them most of all between here and there. Evil ones no doubt, to be watched and warded, but the Guard sent is always sufficient."
Israel sat near the men, and heard something of what they said, but he was too inert with grief and weariness to answer them. Presently, however, Doctor Verity joined him. They said a few words about the storm, their words being emphasised by the falling and crashing of trees outside the windows, and by thunder and lightning and driven torrents of rain; and then Doctor Verity said in a low voice, "He knows nothing of this – he is still as death; he barely breathes; he is unconscious; where is he, Israel?"
"Not quite gone – not quite here – Is he watching the battle of elements in the middle darkness?" Then he told the Doctor what Abel and Jabez had said, and for some minutes only the pealing thunder and the howling winds made answer. But John Verity was thinking, and as soon as there was a moment's lull in the uproar, he said, "Oliver is no stranger to the Immortals, Israel. They have heard of his fame. In their way, they have seen and helped him already. Oliver has fought the devil all his life long. While his body lies yonder, without sense or motion, where is his spirit? Is it now having its last fight with its great enemy? Israel, I was thinking of what Isaiah says, about hell being moved to meet Lucifer at his coming."
"I remember."
"May not heaven also be moved to meet a good man? May not the chief ones of the earth arise, each from his throne, to welcome a royal brother, and narrowly to consider him, and ask of the attending angels, 'Is this he who moved nations, and set free his fellows, and brought forth for his Master one hundredfold?'"
"Yet how he has been reviled; and what is to come will be worse."
"He has already forgiven it. I heard him praying ere he 'went somewhere' that God would 'pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too;' and then he added, just as a little child might, 'and give us a good-night.' And somehow, Israel, I do think he is having a good-night. I do surely think so."
"But oh, John, John Verity, all this great life is to be a failure. All our travail and toil and suffering to be a failure!"
"No, indeed! There is no failure. No, no, nothing of the kind! We have ushered in a new era of Freedom. We have made a breakwater against tyranny. Kings will remember forevermore that they have a joint in their necks. Oliver has done, to the last tittle, the work he was sent to do. It is Oliver the Conqueror! not Oliver the Failure. But I could weep my eyes out for the cruelties his tender heart has had to bear. There are some men I could wish a tenfold retribution to, and I think they will get it. Baxter has whined and whined against Cromwell, but he will have plenty of opportunities yet to wish Cromwell back. And there is Vane! he will not find Charles Stuart as forbearing to his fine mystical unreasonableness as Cromwell has been; he may lay his head on the block before long. As for Lambert and Fairfax and the rest, the subtle Monk will be too much for them. Let them alone, their sins will find them out; and we will sail westward in good hope. Remember, Israel, it is not incumbent on us to finish the work; we can leave it in God's hands. And though we have to leave it behind us incomplete, God will use it some way and somewhere, and the news will find us, even in heaven, and sweeten our happy labours there. I believe this, I do with all my soul."
On Thursday night, the second of September, being the ninth day of his hard fight, he bade his wife and children "a good-bye"; but into this sacred scene not even the tenderest imagination may intrude. Afterward he appeared to withdraw himself entirely within the shadow of the Almighty, waiting the signal for his release in a peaceful, even a happy, mood, and saying in a more and more laboured voice, "Truly God is good – indeed He is – He will not – leave. My work is done – but God will be – with His people." Some one offered him a drink to ease his restlessness and give him sleep, but he refused it. "It is not my design to drink or to sleep," he said; "my design is to make what haste I can to be gone." The last extremity indeed! but one full of that longing desire of the great Apostle "to depart and be with Christ, which is far better."
The next morning, the third of September, his Fortunate Day, "the day of Dunbar Field and Worcester's laureate wreath," he became speechless as the sun rose, and so he lay quiet until between three and four in the afternoon, when he was heard to give a deep sigh. The physician in attendance said softly, "He is gone!" And some knelt to pray, and all wept, but unmindful of his tears, Israel Swaffham cried in a tone of triumph —
"Thou good Soldier of God, Farewell! Thou hast fought a good fight, thou hast kept the faith, and there is laid up for thee a crown greater than England's crown, a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give thee."
But Doctor Verity went slowly to the beloved Dead; he put tenderly back his long gray hair, damp with the dew of death, and closed the eyelids over his darkened eyes, and kissed him on his brow, and on his lips; and as he turned sorrowfully away forever, whispered only two words: —
"Vale Cromwell!"