"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."