"I do wonder," cried his wife, "that you should stoop to parley with one whom we both hold in hatred!"
"Do not imagine," replied Charles, with intense bitterness, "that I shall ever forgive John Pym, whom I have long resolved to punish fittingly. But if I can make an instrument of him, for his own humiliation and my gain, surely I will."
They were walking in the gardens of Whitehall. It was still winter, but of an extraordinary mildness; a pale and soft blue sky showed between the bare branches, and through the thick carpet of damp brown leaves the fresh little plants and weeds pushed up shoots of green.
Charles and his wife walked slowly along the damp paths; she was wrapped carelessly in a black hood and cloak, and her face was disfigured by a look of annoyance, anxiety, and fatigue.
Her beauty and sweetness seemed to have been lately burnt away by the angry pride and passions the recent troubles had roused in her; she was not one to retain either meekness or gaiety in adversity, and she fretted deeply under what she termed the King's inaction.
Had she been in his place she would have put her fate to the test before now by some act of violence, and instead of making concession after concession, as Charles had done, she would have given the call to arms at the first refusal of the Parliament to do her will or at the first murmur they made against her fiat.
And now, in her eyes, a humiliation deeper than any yet endured was to hand, in the shape of the King's proposed interview with John Pym—a proposal which, as she had guessed, came from Lord Falkland, who was beginning to attach himself to the Court, and who was, as always, working sincerely in the interests of concord, a peaceful settlement, and public security.
As usual, perversity and impatience, frivolity and pride made it impossible for the Queen to grasp the difficulties of her husband's position and how those difficulties had been augmented by the hideous uprisings in Ireland, which continued with all the violence of furious passions loosened after long restraint.
She said no more, however, for she was not the woman to waste words on a matter where she was not likely to prevail.
The King too was silent; his feelings against John Pym were no less bitter than his Queen's hatred of that resolute commoner, and they were tinged with a dreadful shame and an awful remorse which she did not feel, for the thought of Pym brought with it the thought of Strafford.