“Oh, my lord, say not that you think him a bad man!”
“Bad! Nay, I believe that all his instincts were virtuous and honourable, and that—until the whirlwind of those latter days in which he scarce knew what he was doing—he meant fairly by his people, and had their welfare at heart. He might have done far better for himself and others had he been a brave bad man like Wentworth—audacious, unscrupulous, driving straight to a fixed goal. No, Angela, he was that which is worse for mankind—an obstinate, weak man. A bundle of impulses, some good and some evil; a man who had many chances, and lost them all; who loved foolishly and too well, and let himself be ruled by a wife who could not rule herself. Blind impulse, passionate folly were sailing the State ship through that sea of troubles which could be crossed but by a navigator as politic, profound, and crafty as Richelieu or Mazarin. Who can wonder that the Royal Charles went down?”
“It must seem strange to you, looking back from the Court, as Hyacinth’s letters have painted it—to that time of trouble?”
“Strange! I stand in the crowd at Whitehall sometimes, amidst their masking and folly, their frolic schemes, their malice, their jeering wit and riotous merriment, and wonder whether it is all a dream, and I shall wake and see the England of ’44, the year Henrietta Maria vanished—a discrowned fugitive, from the scene where she had lived to do harm. I look along the perspective of painted faces and flowing hair, jewels, and gay colours, towards that window through which Charles I. walked to his bloody death, suffered with a kingly grandeur that made the world forget all that was poor and petty in his life; and I wonder does anyone else recall that suffering or reflect upon that doom. Not one! Each has his jest, and his mistress—the eyes he worships, the lips he adores. It is only the rural Put that feels himself lost in the crowd whose thoughts turn sadly to the sad past.”
“Yet whatever your lordship may say——”
“Tush, child, I am no lordship to you! Call me brother, or Fareham; and never talk to me as if I were anything else than your brother in affection.”
“It is sweet to hear you say so much, sir,” she answered gently. “I have often envied my companions at the Ursulines when they talked of their brothers. It was so strange to hear them tell of bickering and ill-will between brother and sister. Had God given me a brother, I would not quarrel with him.”
“Nor shall thou quarrel with me, sweetheart; but we will be fast friends always. Do I not owe thee my life?”
“I will not hear you say so; it is blasphemy against your Creator, who relented and spared you.”
“What! you think that Omnipotence, in the inaccessible mystery of Heaven, keeps the muster-roll of earth open before Him, and reckons each little life as it drops off the list? That is hardly my notion of Divinity. I see the Almighty rather as the Roman poet saw Him—an inexorable Father, hurling the thunderbolt our folly has deserved from His red right hand, yet merciful to stay that hand when we have taken our punishment meekly. That, Angela, is the nearest my mind can reach to the idea of a personal God. But do not bend those pencilled brows with such a sad perplexity. You know, doubtless, that I come of a Catholic family, and was bred in the old faith. Alas! I have conformed ill to Church discipline. I am no theologian, nor quite an infidel, and should be as much at sea in an argument with Hobbes as with Bossuet. Trouble not thy gentle spirit for my sins of thought or deed. Your tender care has given me time to repent all my errors. You were going to tell my lordship something, when I chid you for excess of ceremony—”