When Cromwell returned to the Palace the King had already gone to his supper.

"I will wait," said the Lieutenant-General; and in the little room with the linen-pattern carving in the grey-coloured walls, the portrait of Mary Tudor, the red lacquer desk, and the oriel window, where he had first spoken with Charles, he waited.

Between his buff coat and his shirt lay the packet of papers ripped from the saddle of the secret messenger in the stables of "The Blue Boar"—papers which Charles believed to be across the Channel by now.

Oliver Cromwell waited while nearly half an hour ticked away on the dial of the gilt bracket clock, and then came Lord Digby to say that His Majesty would not be disturbed again to-night; Charles had still the unconquerable pride of royalty; he would not be summoned to meet his enemies at any hour they chose to name; the state with which he was still surrounded perhaps deluded him into thinking he could behave as he had behaved at Whitehall.

If so, the veil of his dignity was now rent in such a way that it could never be patched again; Cromwell, with a manner there was no mistaking, the manner of the master, repeated his demand for an instant audience of His Majesty.

Lord Digby withdrew, and five minutes later the Puritan soldier was ushered into the old, now disused, state chamber of Henry VIII, hung with fine Flemish tapestries representing the 'Seven deadly Sins' and lit by mullioned windows looking on the Park.

Charles was already there, walking up and down; he had changed his dress since Cromwell had left him, and now wore black velvet with cherry-coloured points and gold tags; his fingers played nervously with the long gold chain which thrice circled his chest.

In the light, already slightly dim, of the large room, the grey look of his face and hair was more apparent; it was almost as if some faded carving had been joined to a living body, so extraordinarily lifeless and without light was that immobile face framed in the long, waving, colourless locks.

But in the eyes, swollen and lined, an intense vitality gleamed; the dark pupils sparkled with force and emotion under the tired, drooping lids as Charles stopped in his pacing and turned about to face Cromwell.

"I had not expected this," he said, with a haughtiness which seemed to disguise some straining passion. "What more have we to say, sir? Methought you were to come to-morrow."

"To-morrow might have been too late," said Cromwell. He spoke in his usual quiet, almost melancholy, fashion; his heavy voice held the usual deep note, enthusiastic, mournful.

He stood bareheaded, in his dusty leathers and silk scarf, his falling boots, soiled spurs, and plain tuck sword, his head a little drooping, his tanned face reddish from the ride through the autumn air.

Behind him the Gothic figures on the tapestry twisted and glowed through branches and sprays of flowers and a luxurious profusion of rare birds and uncouth beasts.

"Too late for what?" asked Charles, still endeavouring to conciliate his powerful foe, and now, he hoped, ally, still barely able to conceal his angry pride at the lack of ceremony with which he was treated, the manner in which this man came before him, his great disgust and repulsion at having to deal with such fellows at all.

"Get you gone to-night from Hampton, sir," said Cromwell, "to whatever place seems good—here you shall no longer be safe."

"Ah," cried Charles, "is this the end of all your wily advances? I am not safe!"

"Because I cannot protect you when what Major Harrison knows is spread abroad among the army."

The King's right hand left his chain; he pressed his fingers over his heart; on the black velvet they looked thin and white beyond nature.

"The hand of God is against you," said Cromwell sombrely. "He does not mean that you shall again rule in this land. I would have made treaty with you as the Gibeonites made with David—and I would not ask from you the lives of seven, as they asked for the sons of Saul, but only your own word pledged openly. But you could not keep it, but dealt with the children of Belial and all the array of the ungodly."

Charles took one delicate step backwards.

"These are mighty words," he said.

"They are mighty doings," replied Cromwell. "Not of mean things or small things or the things concerning one man or another am I speaking, but of great things, the displeasure of God on this wretched land, the means we must take to revoke His judgment.... Much blood hath been shed," he added, with a sudden flash in his voice, "but not that which must be before we find peace."

"I know not of what you speak," muttered the King.

"You very well know," replied Cromwell, and through the obscure web of his words a meaning of passion, of force and fire did gleam, like gold or flame. "You know what you have done. How you have deceived and gone crookedly. But God is not mocked. Hath He not said, 'Though they dig into Hell thence shall mine hand take them, though they climb up into Heaven thence shall I pull them down'? And out of darkness and secrecy hath He revealed your designs that you may not bring more evil upon England."

"Of what dost thou accuse the King?" asked Charles.

"Of high treason," replied Cromwell—"of treason towards God and England."

A step farther back moved Charles, so that his shoulders touched and ruffled the tapestry.

"By what authority do you use this boldness?" he asked.

"My authority is from within," answered the Puritan. "I can satisfy men of my authority. I am not afraid. I see that in treating with you I have committed folly, but that is over. God will find another way. Get from Hampton, under what excuse you may. I would not, sir, have the army do you a mischief."

"I will," replied Charles, "get as far as may be from the violence of insulting rebels—I will withdraw myself from my subjects until they remember their duty to their King."

"In what way," demanded Cromwell, "hast thou fulfilled thy duty to God or to His people?"

"I have endured much!" cried Charles, in a sharp voice. "But till now I have been spared open insolence!"

Unmoved and unblenching the Lieutenant-General regarded him.

"Sir," he replied, "you may yet hear worse words than any I have said, and may have to bear a rougher speech. I did not come to rail, but to tell you that I am now persuaded there can be no treaty or understanding between you and us. Sir, others advised me of this awhile ago, but I would not listen. But now the hand of God is plainly discoverable—your plots and subterfuges are revealed, sir, your secret letters to the Queen are known."

Charles, whose quick mind had been reviewing all the possible disasters that could have befallen, who had been wondering which of his intrigues had been unveiled, was not prepared for a catastrophe so complete as the discovery of his secret correspondence with his wife, which revealed, not one, but all of his complicated plots.

As Cromwell told him at last the cause of his sudden estrangement, he felt at once a shock and a premonition chill his heart; he remembered quite clearly what had been in his last letter to the Queen, and the statement that he had made in his irritation and humiliation regarding Cromwell and Ireton, and he saw that another golden chance had gone, and that he had lost for ever the help of the army which he had sacrificed so much pride to gain.

But he faced this misfortune as he had faced so many others, with unfailing courage and dignity.

"You pretend to deal with me as your king," he said, "but you treat me as your prisoner. I am spied upon, and my very letters opened.... There is no more to be said."

Cromwell did not deny the charge, as he might well have done, since Major Harrison, and not he, had tracked and arrested the King's messenger.

"My hopes of you are dead," he merely said. "I would have you leave Hampton, for I know not what the army may do, and if they take you to Whitehall now, sir, it will not be as a king, but as a prisoner."

"I am well used to that treatment," replied Charles, with hot bitterness, "nor have I looked for any other at the hands of rebellious fanatics. Didst thou think," he added, with the full force of that fury and scorn he had so long concealed breaking the bounds of his fitful prudence and his steady courtesy, "that I ever regarded thee as my friend?"

"I would have been so, sincerely," replied Cromwell, with his unruffled, melancholy calm. "I and Ireton risked our prestige with the army to make conferences and debates with you, but it hath been as if one should pour water into a sieve. I would have overlooked much—even the insult you put on me to-day when you tried to buy me with a feather for my cap, when I was offering myself to you with no thought but the good of this realm. So cheaply did you hold Pym, so cheaply will you always hold honest men, it seems—and I, sir, tell you plainly that I have done with you. I will find other ways. Not through you can peace come to England. I do now perceive it. 'Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.' You must go on to your fate, sir, as I shall to mine; but look for no ally in me or in the army, for henceforth there can be no treaty between Your Majesty and us. My cousin, Colonel Whalley, shall remain here to look after your security; as for me, you shall not see me again, or in a manner very different. As for what may become of you or your estate, of that I wash my hands of—the Lord deal with you."

"Amen," said Charles sternly, "and may He judge between you and me. Between me who have kept His ancient statutes and upheld His Church, and you who have defied and blasphemed both."

"God is neither in statutes nor in churches," replied Cromwell, "but in the innermost recesses of the spirits and the secret depths of the heart, and these sanctuaries have you polluted and defiled, with tyranny and falseness and sly and untruthful dealing."

He took a step towards the door; a sudden weariness seemed to have overtaken him, or a wave of the weakness from his recent illness; he looked, in his dusty clothes, like a rider beaten with fatigue, a traveller exhausted after a long journey, his chin sank on his linen collar; his broad shoulders were bowed, and his step was at once heavy and uncertain.

Charles remained white, rigid in pose and expression as when Cromwell entered the chamber; the shadows were swiftly closing round them and all sharp lines and fine colours were blurred; through the one open window a breeze came, which lightly stirred the dusty tapestry and shook it in faint ripples from top to bottom.

The disused, unfurnished chamber, built for pomp and magnificence, was unutterably mournful and dreary, a fitting setting for the unfortunate King whose black figure was lost in, and one with, the ancient arras.

When he had reached the door, Cromwell turned and spoke again.

"Thou hast, sir, lost as good a chance as we are ever like to get of a fair settlement, and lost it through falseness and folly." He spoke with passion, but it was a passion of regret, not of vexation or wrath. "A good night."

The King, without turning his head or moving, stood as if he dismissed an unwelcome suitor from an audience, he showed an indifference that was stronger than contempt and an insulting coolness and absence of passion.

So, with no other word on either side, they parted, and Oliver rode back to Putney, weary with disappointment and chagrin, though his inmost prescience knew, and had known, that this disappointment and chagrin had been from the first foredoomed, that in ever dealing with the King at all he had been preparing the failure that had disclosed itself to-night; as he reflected on the whole business, his stern common sense laughed at the idealism which had led him astray; how could he have ever hoped to have clipped a king to his pattern out of Charles?

The delusion was over; he asked himself, as he rode through the fresh autumn twilight, what was to take its place?

If the King could not be trusted—what then? Some of the bold words of Thomas Harrison flashed into his mind. Must they, could they, do without a king at all?

Oliver Cromwell did not think so; he was never a Republican: order and system were lovely to him, and both were involved, in his English heart, with the idea of a steadfast though constrained monarchy.

In anything else (where, indeed, was the model for anything else to be found in Europe, save perhaps in the peculiar constitution, founded under peculiar circumstances, of the United Provinces?) he foresaw the elements of constant anarchy, constant revolution....

Yet he had done with the King—finished with him with that complete definiteness of which his resolutions were supremely capable.

So Cromwell strove with his thoughts during the short ride to Putney where all the chiefs of the army were already in conclave.

Alone in the uncared-for splendour of another monarch the unhappy King stood, motionless, as his enemy had left him, and tried to measure the extent of his misfortune and to readjust his shattered plans.

He was still, as ever, incredulous of his ultimate defeat, but never before had he been so utterly at a loss for present action. The army was lost to him, that was clear; neither the Scots nor the Parliament were ready to receive him, the Queen had not been able to raise the foreign army, his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, had been prevented by the States-General from sending troops to his assistance, Ormonde could do nothing in Ireland—that country was indeed lost to the royal cause, since the miserable affair of the Earl of Glamorgan—and Hamilton seemed powerless to fight the Campbell faction at Edinburgh.

"What shall I do?" muttered Charles. "What shall I do?"

His thoughts turned with even deeper longing than usual to the Queen in her exile; he believed that he might forsake everything and go to her; two things restrained him, sheer pride and the thought of his two children, the Princess Elisabeth and the Duke of Gloucester, who were in the hands of the Parliament and whom he would have to leave behind.

The Duke of York had already escaped to France, but the figures of these little children rose up and restrained his flight.

Besides, he must stand by his crown ... but he would not stay at Hampton—his own enemy had warned him.

But where to go—in all my three realms where to go?

Several days he waited in his usual indecision, then, miserable, harassed, uncertain, torn by a thousand perplexities, he and his few companions crept one night down the back stairs, came out on to the riverside, and went forth aimlessly, with no plan nor purpose, with nothing but schemes as wild as will-o'-the-wisps to light the dimness and confusions of their future.