The fifteen commissioners had left the King; Sir Harry Vane, perhaps the sincerest republican of all, had stayed behind a moment to entreat Charles—as Pym—as Cromwell—had entreated him—"to be sincere."

The King, grave, composed, courtly, had answered him as he had answered Pym and Cromwell—"In all these dealings I have been sincere."

And so they left him, and the wearisome yet desperate negotiations, which had been protracted from the middle of the September after Preston Rout to nearly the end of November, were over.

Charles had given way; he had consented to the temporary abolition of the bishops, for three years at least; the coalition of Royalist and Presbyterian was formed against Cromwell and the army; the treaty which made a third Civil War imminent was signed.

After the commissioners had departed, Lord Digby came to Charles, who still sat at the head of the table at which he had so often held his own in caustic argument and learned dispute on the subject of Episcopacy.

"Bring me," said the King, "a little wine."

Lord Digby, without calling a servant, served the King himself.

The winter twilight was falling; the sea fog drifting over the island thickened the sad atmosphere that filled the room in which the King sat. A private house at Newport had been for some weeks now his residence, and carried with it less state, but more semblance of freedom, than Carisbrooke Castle.

The King wore grey. Since his own servants had been taken from him he had grown more and more neglectful of his attire; there was nothing either fine or splendid in his garments, and he wore no jewels. His face showed a more cheerful expression than had been of late usual to him, and when he had drunk the alicant, a faint colour came into his cheeks and a sparkle to his eyes.

"Digby," he said, "I think I shall yet be able to undo these rogues, these traitors, these villains—but come, I must write to my Lord Ormonde, for I have had to publicly give orders that he is to do nothing in Ireland, and he may be misled."

To most these words, the first he had spoken since he had assured Sir Harry Vane of his sincerity, would have appeared indeed startling and ironical, but Lord Digby knew the whole of his master's tortuous intrigues. He was aware that from the moment the negotiations with the Parliament began, Charles had been planning to escape from the Isle of Wight, and join that portion of the navy which was now under the command of Rupert and the Prince of Wales, and thus make a descent on Ireland, where the incredible exertions of the Marquess of Ormonde kept alive a royalist party, and from there attempt another such invasion of England as had just ended so fatally at Preston Rout.

Such was the wild, vague, and desperate scheme which the King nursed in preference to returning triumphantly to London as the ally of the Parliament, and from there dealing with the army, now his open enemies.

But this, though it might seem the surest proof of his levity and falsity, was in reality the uttermost testimony he could give of his constancy to principles which he accounted Divine.

The price the Parliament asked was the sacrifice of Episcopacy, and that was what Charles would never consent to. Far preferable was the wild hazard, the desperate risk, the almost certain danger of trusting to Rupert and his lawless little fleet, or Ormonde and his inadequate forces, or Ireland and her uncertain loyalty, than keeping the pact with the Presbyterian, who refused the Divine form of Church government.

Now, almost before the commissioners had entered their coaches, he was hurriedly writing to Ormonde and to the Queen.

"Do not be astonished at any concession I may make," he wrote to the Marquess, "for it will come to nothing, and heed no public commands I may give, until you hear that I am free; but keep alive with all vigour the spirit of loyalty in Ireland."

To his wife he wrote—"The great concessions I have made to-day were merely in order to my escape."

When these hasty letters, in the writing of which the King seemed to relieve some of the feelings that he had had to contain in his bosom during the long hours of his conference with the representatives of Parliament, were finished and locked into the secret drawers of the King's desk, Lord Digby lit the candles and closed the shutters over the mournful, wet, misty night.

"I would, sir," he said, with a little shudder, "that we were well out of this cursed island."

Charles rose from the little desk; his eyes were brilliant, his mouth hardly set under the delicate moustaches.

"If I were once in Ireland," he said, "fortune would look differently on me."

He had always been so—always, under the most cruel mortification hopeful, trustful in some expedient. Ever since his overthrow he had trusted first in Rupert and Montrose, then in the foreign armies the Queen would raise, then in Hamilton, then in the divisions of his enemies, and now in Rupert and his elusive ships.

Lord Digby could not fail to see this incurable hopefulness of his master, nor to argue ill from it; but he was himself light-spirited and fantastical, and his remonstrances were few and faint.

Yet he hazarded one now.

"As the army is deadly disloyal and much raised up of late, and as the Parliament is your one sure refuge from it, sir, would it not be wiser to observe this treaty, at least for a while?"

"Never!" cried Charles fiercely. "Never will I yield! I have sworn that I will defend the Church of England and my rights—even unto death. I will not deal with these rebels save by the sword. The sword? Nay, the halter. I hope, Digby, that God will give me the day when I can see these rogues marched to Tyburn. Thou canst scarcely conceive," he added, with great intensity, "what a hatred I have for them—how my mortifications, my humiliations, my losses, all the loyal blood shed for me cry out for repayment! How I loathe them and their heretical opinions and their canting speech—how I detest them for mine own helplessness!"

He flung himself into the arm-chair beside the hearth, where a feeble fire burnt neglected.

"Hamilton's a prisoner," he said gloomily. "What will they do with my faithful lord? How many noble lives have I not to avenge?"

As he spoke he thought (as he thought often now, too often for his own peace) of Strafford, his first great, awful, and useless sacrifice.

"If it cost my heart's blood I will not submit," he muttered, biting his lip.

But Lord Digby would not so easily relinquish his point—that the Parliament was a surer refuge from the army than Rupert or Ormonde, or any possible ships or possible men either of these Cavaliers might be able to command.

"Fairfax," he reminded the King, "sent Ireton to the House with a remonstrance from the army, protesting against the Parliament dealing with Your Majesty, and even daring to say that you should be brought to trial."

"But the House," replied the King, with a grim smile, "refused to consider these demands of 'armed sectaries.'"

"But the army," persisted Lord Digby, "hath the power."

"I will be free of all of them," cried Charles passionately. "Of the army, of the Parliament, of all their cursed sects and heresies."

He lapsed into a melancholy silence again. My lord put another log on the fire and stirred the faint flames to a blaze.

"In the Queen's letter of this morning," said Charles suddenly, "she mentioned that loyal gentlewoman, Margaret Lucas—she hath fallen ill. When she had the news of the end of her brother, Sir Charles, she was as one who had received a death-sentence."

Tears moistened his own eyes. He was not usually very sensible of the sorrows of those who were ruined in his service, and gratitude was no part of his character or tradition; yet there was something in the story of the gallant young Lucas, who, after an heroic defence of Colchester, had surrendered on terms which bargained for quarter for the inferiors, but left the superiors at the mercy of the enemy, yet who had been taken out with his fellow-officer, Sir George Lisle, and shot like a dog before those walls he had so valiantly defended through three months of famine and misery, which moved the King, even to tears.

"Ireton's doing," he cried. "Jesus God! grant that I may send Ireton to Tyburn one day."

"From an officer who came here recently I heard an account of it," said Lord Digby, in a low voice. "They neither of them thought to have died, seeing they had surrendered to mercy, but they made no grief of it. Sir Charles was shot first, and Sir George bent and kissed him while he was yet warm (and conscious, I hope) and spoke to the wretched rebels, 'Come nearer and make sure of me.' And upon one of the dogs replying, 'I warrant you we shall hit you, Sir George,' he smiled and said, 'Ay! but I have been nearer to you, many a time, my friends, and you have missed me,—I would I had been there to give them company.'"

"And they are gone!" sighed Charles. "How many of the young and brave have I not lost! Ah, Digby, mine hath been a dismal fate, to ruin all those I would most advance, to bring down those whom I would most exalt."

He was not thinking now of Sir Charles Lucas, but of the Queen; his thoughts were never long from her. The image of her in her exile, in her poverty and humiliation, in her beaten pride and broken splendour was the most lively of all his mortifications, the most exquisite of all his secret tortures; he felt that he had abjectly failed towards her, towards her children, and, keenest sting of all, that she must despise him for his failure and his misfortune.

His head sank lower and lower on his breast, and two tears forced themselves from his tired eyes and hung burning on his faded cheeks.

"Digby, my faithful lord," he said, "I do sometimes think that it would have been better for me to have died at Naseby. By now the Lord would have judged me, and I should have been at peace—peace, peace! How the word dangles before us while the thing is never to be found, this side of heaven."

Digby dropped on one knee beside him.

"May Your Majesty soon find it," he said, in a broken voice, "and live long to enjoy it."

"If it were possible!" murmured Charles. "But we must get to Ireland—it is very needful that we should get to Ireland."

Lord Digby lowered his voice, as if somewhere in this lonely, desolate-looking room a spy of Parliament or army might lurk.

"The preparations are all complete," he said. "It only needs to wait until the commissioners have left the Island."

A little shudder shook the King.

"What will it feel, Digby," he murmured, "to be free again—free!"

Then, as if rousing himself from thoughts that threatened to be overwhelming, he put out his hand and took up a small brown volume tooled in gold, and, turning over the thin pages rough with print, let slip his mind from the leases of care and suffered himself to be distracted by Lucan's Pharsalia.

The mist changed to rain, which slashed at the window; a winter wind disturbed the tapestry and flickered the flames on the deep hearth, which hissed beneath the drops falling down the wide chimney.

Charles, sunk in the deep, worn leather chair, with one thin hand supporting his thin face, the long curls flowing over his breast, gathered consolation from those ancient deeds of melancholy heroism and fated endeavour.

Lord Digby left the room to concert with the few personal attendants left the King about the final arrangements for the King's flight from Newport as soon as the Parliamentarians should have returned to London.

But again Charles Stewart proved unfortunate.

The day before his projected escape Colonel Hammond, the Governor of the Island, sent an escort to remove His Majesty from Newport to Hurst Castle, a dreary residence near the coast, on the sea shingle, where Charles was closely guarded beyond all hope of escape, even if his word of honour not to escape had not been extracted from him: and this was a point where he would admit of no sophistries. So the dream of Rupert and his ships and Ormonde and his loyal Catholics vanished, as all Charles' dreams had vanished, into the bitter obscurity of disappointment.