So saying, he laid down a little manual of gun drill, the pages of which he had been turning over, and relit his pipe.
The scene was the guard-room of the army's headquarters at Putney. Cromwell had been to London that morning to see his family, who were now established in a mansion in Drury Lane, and his buff coat and his falling boots were still dusty with the dust of the return ride.
Fairfax was in the room and the preacher, Hugh Peters. The bolder Harrison voiced their opinions when he told Cromwell that he was becoming too intimate with the King and too firm a supporter of the royal pretensions; but Fairfax, from a natural reserve, and Peters, because he hoped the Lieutenant-General would make an adequate defence, were silent.
"Little did I ever think," cried Harrison, pacing heavily about the room, "that thou wouldst become the consort of tyrants, the frequenter of the strange children, whose mouth talketh of vanity, and whose right hand is a hand of iniquity!"
Cromwell raised his calm eyes from his long clay pipe.
"No man will enjoy his possessions in peace until the King hath his rights again," he said, "and I make no disguise from you nor from any that I am doing my utmost to bring about a good peace with His Majesty. For what other reason did any of us take up arms?"
"Ay," assented Sir Thomas Fairfax hastily, "and the Parliament and the city of London are pressing for a settlement."
"My visits to Hampton Palace," continued Cromwell, "and my communings with the King have had this one object—a good peace."
"If thou canst bring Charles Stewart to a good peace—and make him keep it—thou hast more than mortal skill," said Harrison.
"What wouldst thou in this realm?" asked Cromwell, glancing up at him with a gleam of humour. "A republic?"