The clock struck one; about five minutes afterwards Cromwell had closed
the door of his chamber; the half-hour chimed. Constance was looking on
her father, sleeping calmly in his chair, in a closet that opened into
his favourite library. He had not been in bed for several nights, and,
since his afflicting insanity, could seldom be prevailed on to enter his
own room. After pausing a few minutes, while her lips appeared to move
with the prayer her heart so fervently formed, she undid the bolt,
quietly opened the door, then partially closed it, and left her wretched
parent alone with his physician.
She could hear within the library, in which she now stood, the heavy
breathings of the afflicted man. A large lamp was burning on the massive
oak-table: it shed a cheerful light, but it was a light too cheerful for
her troubled and feverish spirit--she sank upon a huge carved chair, and
passed her small hand twice or thrice over her brow, where heavy drops
had gathered; then drew towards her the large Bible that had been her
mother's. On the first page, in the hand-writing of that beloved mother,
was registered the day of her marriage, and underneath the births of her
several children, with a short and thanksgiving prayer affixed to each;
a little lower down came a mournful register, the dates and manner of
her sons' deaths; but the Christian spirit that had taught her words and
prayers of gratitude, had been with her in the time of trouble; the
passages were penned in true humility and humble-mindedness, though the
blisterings of many tears remained upon the paper.
Constantia turned over the leaves more carelessly than was her custom;
but her eye dwelt upon one of the beautiful promises, given with so much
natural poetry by the great Psalmist,--"I have been young, and now am
old, yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their
bread." "Alas!" she thought, "I can derive only half consolation from
such as this. One of my parents was indeed righteous; but, alas! what
has the other been?" She bowed her head upon the book, and did not again
raise it, until a soft hand touched her shoulder, and a light voice
whispered "Constance!"
It was Lady Frances Cromwell.
"My dear Constantia! here's a situation! I never knew any thing so
provoking, so tantalising! My father, they say, has taken as many as
twenty prisoners, of one sort or another; and has caged them up in that
purple-room with himself, examining into and searching out every
secret--secrets I want so much to know. He has got the Buccaneer, they
say."