Oliver Cromwell crossed the room, which was dark and plain, but full of the odour of dry rose leaves and lavender and camphire, and stood before his mother who sat by the window, a small shrivelled gentlewoman in a hooded chair. She lifted her blurred eyes and held out her two little hands to him; he kissed them, and then as Elisabeth Claypole left them he broke forth, "Mother, I am tired, tired."
He rested his sick head against the mullions and gazed up at the little strip of sky, glorious with floating clouds of light, visible above the houses opposite.
"How is it with thee, my son Oliver?" she asked. "Thou art come in triumph with much acclaim, but hast thou within the peace of God, which passeth all understanding?"
He answered with a fervour and a quickness which was like the passion of self-justification yet ennobled by his usual enthusiasm.
"I have followed the pillar of cloud by day," he answered, "the pillar of fire by night. I have disregarded the wind and the whirlwind, and I have listened for the still small voice. I believe God hath been with me because of the victories I have had."
"Surely," replied Mrs. Cromwell, "He hath witnessed for thee as He witnessed against the King. Is not this fight at Worcester spoken of on all tongues as the crowning mercy?"
The Lord-General continued to look at the sky which was fast paling from flame tints into a burning paleness, like gold in a furnace, thrice refined.
"For nine years I have laboured," he said, "and not once hath the Lord put me down. Yet sometimes the voice will fail, sometimes the Sign will not come—sometimes I even seem to fall from grace—sometimes I wonder why I ever left obscurity. Yet the Lord called me! I will maintain it—He held up my hands and made me His instrument! I have been one with the Spirit; I say it was God's work, for He did not put me down! Now, it were better that I should lay aside my high office and return to what I was."
"It were better," said the old gentlewoman; "but can England spare you yet? For me, I would rather die where I have lived than amid these splendours."
"I will go back to my own place," continued Oliver Cromwell. "I have done what God set me to do—I have swept the enemy from the land, I have seen the tyrant slain, and his children exiled. When shall the young man, Charles Stewart, get another army? Nay, when he fled from Worcester city, he fled from his throne for ever; his forces are scattered and no captain out of Egypt shall ever get them together again. I say the land is purged, and what work is there for me?"