"What can he do?" replied the Member for Cambridge. "Strafford falleth through serving him, and likely enough came to London on promise of the King's protection. The King will stand by Strafford."
"Then it will remain to be seen which is the stronger—Parliament or His Majesty," said John Hampden, and he sighed as if he foresaw ahead a long and bitter struggle. "I tell thee this," he added, with an earnestness almost sad, "that if the people are disappointed of justice on my lord, the King is not safe in his own capital, nor yet the Queen. Thou hast observed, Mr. Cromwell, how well hated the Queen is?"
"A Papist and a Frenchwoman," replied the other, "how could she hope for English loyalty? And she is meddling—of all things the English hate a meddling woman. Her ways might do well in France, but here we like them not. I am sorry for my Lady Strafford," he added irrelevantly, and with a strange note of tenderness in his rough voice. "What are all these issues to her? Yet she must suffer for them. I saw her yesterday, and she was as still for terror as a chased deer fallen spent of breath, and yet had the courage to move and speak with pride, poor gentlewoman!"
"We shall see many piteous things before England be tranquil," returned Mr. Hampden sadly. "Chief among them this discomfiture of patient women. The Lord support them."
They were now at Mr. Cromwell's door.
"Wilt thou come up, my cousin?" he asked, laying a detaining hand on the other's damp coat sleeve.
"This evening hold me excused," answered Mr. Hampden. "I have some country gentlemen at my entertainment, and I would not disappoint them."
So they parted as quietly as if this momentous day had held nothing of note, and Mr. Cromwell went up to his modest chamber and lit the candles and placed them on a writing-table which held a Bible among the quills and papers. He stood for a while thoughtfully; he had flung off his mantle and his hat, and his well-made, strong figure showed erect in a plain, rather ill-cut, suit of dark green cloth, his band and cuffs were of linen, and there was no single ornament nor an inch of lace about his whole attire; indeed, his lack of the ordinary elegancies of a gentleman's costume would have seemed to some an affectation, and to all a sure indication that he had now definitely joined the increasingly powerful Puritan party which had set itself to destroy every vestige of ornament in England—from Bishops to lace handkerchiefs, as their opponents sneeringly remarked. These enemies were not, perhaps, in a humour for sneering to-night when the chief of them lay straightened between prison walls. So thought Mr. Cromwell as he stood thoughtfully before the little table that bore the Bible, and looked down on the closed covers.
Above the table hung a mirror; the glass was old and cracked, and into the frame were stuck various papers which showed how the present possessor of the room disregarded the original use of the mirror. Sufficient of the glass, however, remained unobscured to reflect the head and shoulders of Oliver Cromwell, and this reflection, with the dark background and the blurred surface of the glass, was like a fine portrait, and by reason of the absolute consciousness of the man, like a portrait of his soul as well as of his features.