"It is impossible to tell you how grateful Cluny and I are to you; I think no other woman in England would have been so forgetful of herself, and so brave for others."
"Perhaps not, Jane. But I love you, and I love justice and mercy, even to an enemy. I can always be brave with a good reason. And, pray, how comes my lord on towards recovery?"
"Slowly. Life was nearly gone; body and mind were at death's door; but he can walk a little now, and in two or three weeks we are going away,—far away,—we are going to my brothers in the Massachusetts Colony."
"Jane Swaffham! I will not believe you! And pray what shall I do? You shall not think of such a thing."
"It is necessary. Cluny's mental sufferings have made it so. When he was first imprisoned he tried to write, to compose hymns and essays, to make speeches, to talk aloud; but as time went on, he could not keep control of himself and of his awful circumstances, and now all the misery of those long, dark, lonely years has settled into one idea,—space without end. The rooms are too small. He walks to the walls and trembles. He throws open the doors and windows that he may have room to breathe. In the night he wakes with a cry, he feels as if he were smothering. If he goes into the garden he shrinks from the gates; and the noise of the city, and the sight of the crowds passing fills him with fear and anxiety. He wants to go where there are no limits, no men who may hate and imprison him; and his physician says, 'Let him live for weeks, or months, out on the ocean.' This is what he needs, and he is eager to get away."
"You will come back?"
"I think it is unlikely. Father feels a change approaching. The Protector's health is failing rapidly; he is dying, Matilda, dying of the injustice and ingratitude he meets on every hand. 'Wounded,' yes slain, 'in the house of my friends,' is his constant cry."
"'Tis most strange that a man of war like Oliver Cromwell should care what his friends think or say."
"Yet he does. When he speaks to father about Harrison, Lambert, Alured, Overton and others of his old companions, he wrings his hands and weeps like a woman; or else he protests against them in such angry sorrow as distresses one to see and hear it."
"He ought to know that he has been raised above the love of men who are less noble than himself, and that if beyond and above their love, then they will hate and abuse him. If he dies?——"