He lapsed into a melancholy silence again. My lord put another log on the fire and stirred the faint flames to a blaze.
"In the Queen's letter of this morning," said Charles suddenly, "she mentioned that loyal gentlewoman, Margaret Lucas—she hath fallen ill. When she had the news of the end of her brother, Sir Charles, she was as one who had received a death-sentence."
Tears moistened his own eyes. He was not usually very sensible of the sorrows of those who were ruined in his service, and gratitude was no part of his character or tradition; yet there was something in the story of the gallant young Lucas, who, after an heroic defence of Colchester, had surrendered on terms which bargained for quarter for the inferiors, but left the superiors at the mercy of the enemy, yet who had been taken out with his fellow-officer, Sir George Lisle, and shot like a dog before those walls he had so valiantly defended through three months of famine and misery, which moved the King, even to tears.
"Ireton's doing," he cried. "Jesus God! grant that I may send Ireton to Tyburn one day."
"From an officer who came here recently I heard an account of it," said Lord Digby, in a low voice. "They neither of them thought to have died, seeing they had surrendered to mercy, but they made no grief of it. Sir Charles was shot first, and Sir George bent and kissed him while he was yet warm (and conscious, I hope) and spoke to the wretched rebels, 'Come nearer and make sure of me.' And upon one of the dogs replying, 'I warrant you we shall hit you, Sir George,' he smiled and said, 'Ay! but I have been nearer to you, many a time, my friends, and you have missed me,—I would I had been there to give them company.'"
"And they are gone!" sighed Charles. "How many of the young and brave have I not lost! Ah, Digby, mine hath been a dismal fate, to ruin all those I would most advance, to bring down those whom I would most exalt."
He was not thinking now of Sir Charles Lucas, but of the Queen; his thoughts were never long from her. The image of her in her exile, in her poverty and humiliation, in her beaten pride and broken splendour was the most lively of all his mortifications, the most exquisite of all his secret tortures; he felt that he had abjectly failed towards her, towards her children, and, keenest sting of all, that she must despise him for his failure and his misfortune.
His head sank lower and lower on his breast, and two tears forced themselves from his tired eyes and hung burning on his faded cheeks.
"Digby, my faithful lord," he said, "I do sometimes think that it would have been better for me to have died at Naseby. By now the Lord would have judged me, and I should have been at peace—peace, peace! How the word dangles before us while the thing is never to be found, this side of heaven."
Digby dropped on one knee beside him.