THE LION'S WHELP (continued 8)

"For such dismal thought and feeling there is the Holy Scriptures."

"Yes, yes, Oliver knows the Comforter, and sometimes there is a message for him. Last night he made Harvey read him the fourth of Philippians, and he said when he had listened to it, 'This Scripture did once save my life when my eldest son died, which went as a dagger to my heart, indeed it did;' then, with a great joy he repeated the words, 'I can do all things through Christ which strengthened! me;' adding, 'He that was Paul's Christ, is my Christ too!'"

Cromwell had hoped that his great afflictions would bring his friends back to his side; but envy, hatred and greedy ambition are not to be conciliated. Even at this time, Ludlow, Lambert, Vane, Harrison, Marten,—all the men whom he had trusted, and who had trusted him, stood aloof from his sorrow; and their sullen indifference wounded him to the quick. He had a burning fever both of the body and soul, but in two weeks he gathered a little strength and left Hampton Court for Whitehall. His unfinished work drove at him like a taskmaster. He must make great haste, for he knew that the night was coming.

"I am glad he is back in Whitehall," said Martha to her husband, when she heard of the change. "I remember something that Jane said about that old, gloomy Court; he will get better in London."

"I know not, Martha," answered Israel sadly; "Fairfax was with him to-day, and he might as well have drawn his sword on his old friend,—better and kinder had he done so."

"Fairfax is proud as Lucifer. What did he want?"

"The Duke of Buckingham has been sent to the Tower—where he ought to have been sent long ago; but he is married to the daughter of Fairfax, and the haughty Lord General went to see Cromwell about the matter. He met him in the gallery at Whitehall and asked that the order for Buckingham's arrest should be retracted. And Cromwell told him that if the offense were only against his own life, the Duke could go free that hour, but that he could not pardon plotters against the Commonwealth. It grieved him to the heart to say these words, and Fairfax saw how ill and how troubled he looked. But he had not one word of courtesy; he turned abruptly and cocked his hat, and threw his cloak under his arm in that insolent way he was ever used to when in his tempers. And Oliver looked at me like a man that has been struck in the face by a friend. Then he went to his desk and worked faithfully, inexorably, all day;—but—but——"

"But what, Israel?"

"It is near—the end."

Indeed, this interview with Fairfax seemed to be the last heart-weight he could carry. That night, the man who had been used to shelter his dove-like wife from every trouble in his strong heart, laid his head upon her shoulder and said pitifully, "O Elizabeth, I am the wretchedest creature! Speak some words of hope and peace to me." Then she soothed and comforted him from the deep wells of her tenderness, and never once put into words the fearful thought which lay deep in her heart—"What will become of me when he is gone?" But Oliver had this same anxious boding, and he managed that night to tell his wife that if God, in mercy, called him on the sudden, Israel Swaffham had his last words and advices for her,—words that would then be from Oliver in heaven to Elizabeth on earth. They spoke of their old, free, happy life; of their sons and daughters both here and there, and mingled for the last time their tears and prayers together.

"Let us trust yet in God, dear Oliver," she said, as they rose from their knees; "is He not sufficient?"

"Trust in God!" he cried. "Who else is there in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath? And as our John Milton says—

"'. . . if this truth fail,

The pillared firmament is rottenness,

And earth's base built on stubble.'

Trust in God! Indeed I do! God has not yet spoken His last word to Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell." Then he drew her close to his heart, kissed her fondly, and said, almost with sobs, "My dearest, if I go the way of all the earth first, thou wilt never forget me?"

"How could I forget thee? How could I? Not in my life days! Not in my eternal days! Heart of my heart! My good, brave, true husband, Elizabeth will never forget thee, never cease to love thee and honour thee, while the Everlasting One is thy God and my God."

The next day he went to his desk and began to write, but speedily and urgently called for Israel Swaffham. When he answered the call, Oliver was in great physical agony, but he took some papers from a drawer and said, "When I am no longer here, Israel, give these to my wife. Thurloe has the key to all State questions; he knows my intents and my judgments on them. And there is one more charge for you: when all is over, speak to the army for me. Tell the men to remember me while they live. Truly, I think they will. Tell them I will take love and boldness to myself, and plead for them when I am nearer to God than I am now. It may be we shall serve together again—among the hosts of the Most High. Say to them my tears hinder my last words, as indeed they do. Now let me lean on you, Israel. I am going to my last hard fight."

When he reached his room, he stood a moment and looked wistfully round it. It was but a narrow chamber, but large enough for the awfully close, near conflict, that he had to fight in it,—a conflict which was to put asunder flesh and spirit, and within its few feet, with strange, strong pains deliver the Eternal out of Time, and set free his Immortal Self from the carnal prison-house of many woes in which he had suffered for more than fifty-nine years. For ten terrible days and nights the anguish of this struggle went on unceasingly, sometimes the great Combatant being "all here" and full of faith and courage, sometimes far down the shoal of life and reason, and wandering uneasily through bygone days of battle and distress and darkness. Then Israel held his burning hands, and listened, while in a voice very far off, he ejaculated such passages as had then been familiar to him:—"The shield of His mighty men is made red, the valiant men are in scarlet. The chariots shall rage in the streets—they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings."[4] And once at the midnight when all was still he cried, "If the Lord had suffered it, then I had died on the battle-field as His Man of War, with tumult, with shouting and with the sound of the trumpet."[5]

[4] Nahum 2:4.

[5] Amos 2: 2.

He had turned to face his last enemy on the twenty-fourth of August, and on the thirtieth there was such a tempest as had never before been seen in England. Whole forests were laid on the ground; traffic was swept from the roads and the streets, and the ships from the stormy seas; and the tide at Deptford, to the dismay of the superstitious, threw up the carcass of a monstrous whale. The chambers of Whitehall were filled with the roar of the great winds. The guards leaned on their arms, praying or talking solemnly together on the prodigy of the storm.

"Michael and the devil had a dispute about the body of Moses," said one old grizzled trooper to his companion. "Are they fighting about our Cromwell, think ye, Abel?"

"Who knows?" was the answer. "The Prince of the Powers of the Air has His battalions out this night, but Michael and his host will be sufficient. You'll see, Jabez, when the storm is over, our Cromwell will go;" and he drew his hand across his eyes and added, "He'll have company, Jabez, a great bodyguard of ministering angels; and sure a soul needs them most of all between here and there. Evil ones no doubt, to be watched and warded, but the Guard sent is always sufficient."

Israel sat near the men, and heard something of what they said, but he was too inert with grief and weariness to answer them. Presently, however, Doctor Verity joined him. They said a few words about the storm, their words being emphasised by the falling and crashing of trees outside the windows, and by thunder and lightning and driven torrents of rain; and then Doctor Verity said in a low voice, "He knows nothing of this—he is still as death; he barely breathes; he is unconscious; where is he, Israel?"

"Not quite gone—not quite here—— Is he watching the battle of elements in the middle darkness?" Then he told the Doctor what Abel and Jabez had said, and for some minutes only the pealing thunder and the howling winds made answer. But John Verity was thinking, and as soon as there was a moment's lull in the uproar, he said, "Oliver is no stranger to the Immortals, Israel. They have heard of his fame. In their way, they have seen and helped him already. Oliver has fought the devil all his life long. While his body lies yonder, without sense or motion, where is his spirit? Is it now having its last fight with its great enemy? Israel, I was thinking of what Isaiah says, about hell being moved to meet Lucifer at his coming."

"I remember."

"May not heaven also be moved to meet a good man? May not the chief ones of the earth arise, each from his throne, to welcome a royal brother, and narrowly to consider him, and ask of the attending angels, 'Is this he who moved nations, and set free his fellows, and brought forth for his Master one hundredfold?'"

"Yet how he has been reviled; and what is to come will be worse."

"He has already forgiven it. I heard him praying ere he 'went somewhere' that God would 'pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too;' and then he added, just as a little child might, 'and give us a good-night.' And somehow, Israel, I do think he is having a good-night. I do surely think so."

"But oh, John, John Verity, all this great life is to be a failure. All our travail and toil and suffering to be a failure!"

"No, indeed! There is no failure. No, no, nothing of the kind! We have ushered in a new era of Freedom. We have made a breakwater against tyranny. Kings will remember forevermore that they have a joint in their necks. Oliver has done, to the last tittle, the work he was sent to do. It is Oliver the Conqueror! not Oliver the Failure. But I could weep my eyes out for the cruelties his tender heart has had to bear. There are some men I could wish a tenfold retribution to, and I think they will get it. Baxter has whined and whined against Cromwell, but he will have plenty of opportunities yet to wish Cromwell back. And there is Vane! he will not find Charles Stuart as forbearing to his fine mystical unreasonableness as Cromwell has been; he may lay his head on the block before long. As for Lambert and Fairfax and the rest, the subtle Monk will be too much for them. Let them alone, their sins will find them out; and we will sail westward in good hope. Remember, Israel, it is not incumbent on us to finish the work; we can leave it in God's hands. And though we have to leave it behind us incomplete, God will use it some way and somewhere, and the news will find us, even in heaven, and sweeten our happy labours there. I believe this, I do with all my soul."

On Thursday night, the second of September, being the ninth day of his hard fight, he bade his wife and children "a good-bye"; but into this sacred scene not even the tenderest imagination may intrude. Afterward he appeared to withdraw himself entirely within the shadow of the Almighty, waiting the signal for his release in a peaceful, even a happy, mood, and saying in a more and more laboured voice, "Truly God is good—indeed He is—He will not—leave. My work is done—but God will be—with His people." Some one offered him a drink to ease his restlessness and give him sleep, but he refused it. "It is not my design to drink or to sleep," he said; "my design is to make what haste I can to be gone." The last extremity indeed! but one full of that longing desire of the great Apostle "to depart and be with Christ, which is far better."

The next morning, the third of September, his Fortunate Day, "the day of Dunbar Field and Worcester's laureate wreath," he became speechless as the sun rose, and so he lay quiet until between three and four in the afternoon, when he was heard to give a deep sigh. The physician in attendance said softly, "He is gone!" And some knelt to pray, and all wept, but unmindful of his tears, Israel Swaffham cried in a tone of triumph—

"Thou good Soldier of God, Farewell! Thou hast fought a good fight, thou hast kept the faith, and there is laid up for thee a crown greater than England's crown, a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give thee."

But Doctor Verity went slowly to the beloved Dead; he put tenderly back his long gray hair, damp with the dew of death, and closed the eyelids over his darkened eyes, and kissed him on his brow, and on his lips; and as he turned sorrowfully away forever, whispered only two words:—

"Vale Cromwell!"