LITMIR.BIZ

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      "Sir," said the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who had been called hotly from that country to counsel the imperative needs of the King. "I am come to give you advice, and I tell you first, and plainly, never man came to so lost a business."

      As he spoke they stood looking at each other, master and servant, King and minister, in a little cabinet of Whitehall, that glittered with richness and flash of deep colour, like a casket of jewels.

      Beyond the deep square window lay the gardens, the houses, the straight reach of river, and London, beneath a quivering August haze; no discord of sight nor sound disturbed the peaceful harmony of this scene, and in the palace gardens the trees rustled and the flowers gave forth their strength in sweet odours unvexed by human noise or hustle; yet my lord, gazing out on this sunshine, knew well enough that the city, whose towers rose beyond the sleepy river, was nursing forces that might soon gather sufficient deadly power to sweep him, and all he stood for, into nothingness. He bore himself erect, and the courage that was his strongest quality showed in his haughty pose, in the expression of his dark, disdainful face, in the quiet smile with which he spoke his gloomy pronouncement.

      He received no immediate answer, and in the pause of silence he glanced attentively at the master whom he had served so whole-heartedly and believed in so intensely—for such as he must always believe intensely in the principle for which they fight.

      Charles was leaning against the mullions; melancholy and levity were strangely mingled in his mien. In stature and make he was slight, in dress extravagant, his dove-grey silk was embroidered with seed pearls and gold, and a deep collar of exquisite lace was fastened by two gold tassels at the lacing of his doublet.

      Every Englishman, first seeing him, noted how foreign he was in appearance. Though brought up as one of the nation whom he was to rule, blood was here stronger than breeding, the powerful French-Scotch strain of his famous name, the influence of his gay, foreign mother, showed in his elegance, his refinement, his somewhat sad dignity, which gave him an air as if he were too great to be proud outwardly, but was beyond measure proud inwardly.

      His hair, of the renowned Stewart auburn colour, fell full and soft round a face that was slightly worn and troubled, but handsome and composed still—a face that was too charming to be the index of a mind, or more than a mere seductive disguise for whatever manner of man lay beneath.

      My lord had served him long and known him as intimately as any man save my late murdered Duke of Buckingham, but even my lord, now it was coming to the issue of their joint policies, could not be quite sure what the King would do—where he would be adamant and where give way, where he would fail, and where he would stand firm.

      "A lost business," Charles repeated at last. He had a blood-red cameo on the little finger of his fair left hand, and turned it about as he spoke; it was the only jewel he wore save a long pearl in his right ear.

      "Sir, I call it no better than lost. The army unexercised and unprovided, great disloyalty abroad, the Scots in a rebellion which is daily more successful, the people mightily disaffected, and all in a clamour for a Parliament—and I would to God, sire, that you had not dismissed the last one, for it was better than any you are like to have called together at this turn."

      "I will," said Charles, "call none at all." He knew secretly that his minister was right, and he already regretted the moment of spleen in which, after a three weeks' sitting, he had dismissed the first Parliament he had called for eleven years—had called in desperation for aid against the Scots—for he saw that what Strafford said was true, and that in the present temper of the nation he was unlikely to get men so loyal in their temper as even the Members of the so-called Little Parliament had been.

      "Yea, call none at all," returned the Earl, "and where are we for money? Is there any king or country to whom we can turn? Have we not asked in vain even at Rome—even from the merchants of Genoa?"

      "The money must be raised in England," said the King. He would not put it into words, but to himself he was forced to admit that no foreign power nor personage would lend money without security—and security Charles was quite unable to give; for in the eyes of Europe a King of England, acting without his Parliament, was a person by no means to be seriously regarded.

      "Then," returned Strafford, in the tone of a man who courageously accepts defeat, "Your Majesty must call another Parliament."

      Charles moved from the window and seated himself before a small bureau of dark wood, inlaid with mother-o'-pearl; he rested his delicate face in his delicate hand and gazed mournfully, almost reproachfully, at his minister.

      "You accuse me of failure," said the Earl, answering the look in his master's eyes. "Well, I have failed."

      Certainly he had; his famous policy, which he had proudly called "Thorough," had fallen to pieces before the first demonstration of the popular anger, and his attempt to establish the English monarchy as the monarchies of Spain and France were established, had come to nothing. He was not the man to shirk blame or responsibility, and he did not reflect, as he might have reflected, that had Charles whole-heartedly trusted Strafford as Strafford had whole-heartedly served Charles, the endeavour to force the policies of Richelieu on the English people might have approached nearer accomplishment, or at least have avoided a failure so disastrous.

      The King did not speak; he was not in a mood to be generous with his servant, for his own humiliation was very bitter and would be bitterer still if he were forced to call another Parliament. The rebellious Scots, resisting his attempt to thrust Episcopalian bishops upon them, had advanced as far as Durham, and the English, far from flying to arms to resist the invader, were showing obviously enough that they considered the Scottish cause as theirs, and would indeed soon follow their northern neighbour's example and call a Parliament of their own did Charles not call one for them.

      So much the daily petitions, and the demeanour of John Pym, the ringleader of the malcontents, and those country gentlemen who had rallied round him in the Little Parliament, by refusing supplies for the Scottish war unless the country's grievances were first redressed, attested.

      Strafford took his eyes from his master and looked across the garden to the shimmering river. He was a more resolute, a more brilliant, a bolder man than the King. He saw more clearly and gauged more accurately than His Majesty the strength of the opposition now growing in England against the royal prerogative and the pretensions of the Anglican clergy, and he saw also that in the ensuing struggle he stood in the forefront of the battle and was marked out by Pym and his followers as the first and principal victim. Once he had been of Pym's party, and when he had seceded to the King, Pym had told him, "You may leave us, but we shall not leave you while your head is on your shoulders."

      He had only been Thomas Wentworth then, and now he was Earl of Strafford, and, under the King, the greatest man in the three realms, but the threat recurred to him now as his eyes rested on the dazzle of the river flowing swiftly towards the Tower.

      He knew he had come to England to play a desperate game with John Pym, and that the stakes were, "Thy head or my head."

      The King startled him from his sombre thoughts by a light blow with clenched hand on the bureau, and by rising abruptly.

      "Is there no one to defend me against these rebellious Commons?" he cried, as if his reflections had become desperate and were no longer to be borne in silence.

      "I have," said Strafford, "done my utmost. I am the best-hated man in England, sire, for what I have done to enforce your authority. But if none of my expedients avail your Majesty, if the people will not take a debased coinage, if the train-bands refuse to arm—if all the support of my Archbishop but end in his fleeing his palace, pursued by the people——"

      "The people!" broke in Charles, "always the people!"

      "Ay," said Strafford, "always—the people."

      "And what, my lord," asked the King, "is your advice now?"

      "Advice?" echoed the Earl; the sun now fell full over his fine face and

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