Had any one come up through the November mist and noticed and observed this gentleman leaning on the rough willow paling, he would have seen nothing to suggest a gloomy mystic nor one struggling with the anguished tribulations of the soul.
He was, to the outward eye, a man in the prime of life, of the type commonly accepted as English, and, indeed, possible to no other nation in the world, of medium height and the appearance of medium strength, his obvious gentility gracing his plain, sober, frieze clothes, and the little sword at his side giving the one courtly touch to his habit, which otherwise, with plain band and ribbonless hat, might have seemed too much that of a mere farmer, for his high boots, now mud-caked, had seen good service. He wore no gloves on his browned hands, and his hair, of the dusk English brown, was cut in a country fashion, and worn no longer than his shoulders.
His face was unusual, yet might have been that of an ordinary man, the features powerful, the nose bluntly aquiline, the mouth set steadily, the Saxon grey-blue eyes rather overbrowed, giving the countenance a glooming air, the chin and jaw massive, the complexion tanned to the glowing natural colour of a healthy fair man past any bloom of youth, and unused to the softness of town life.
Not a handsome face, but not uncomely, and remarkable chiefly (now, at least) for a certain quiet look, not a slumbering look, but rather the look of one whose soul is locked and sealed.
Such was his appearance, and his history was as simple and unpretending as his visage and his attire; nothing had ever happened to him that he should stand there now sunk in torments of melancholy. His life had been smooth, uneventful, successful; he had been born and bred in Huntingdon, and never gone beyond the borders of that county save when he had sat, a silent borough Member, in His Majesty's last Parliament at Westminster, nine years ago, and he was in that happy position of being well known and respected, in his own little world, as one of the largest landowners in St. Ives, and utterly unknown to the great world where fame is distraction and confusion. He was tranquil in an honourable obscurity, happy in his wife, his children, of an old well-placed family, well connected, and of considerable local influence and fair repute. He could himself remember that His late Majesty, twice coming through Huntingdon, had each time been entertained by his grandfather at his manor house, on the first occasion with much splendour, when the King came from Scotland to take up his new crown.
In his own business he had prospered; the lands he had bought at St. Ives and which he farmed himself, reclaiming them with patience from the fen, had well repaid his labour, and he might count himself well off, and even, for this quiet spot, wealthy.
Therefore it might have been supposed that this man, midway now through life, would have considered his honourable labour, his honourable profits, his serene existence, his fair placement and good report among his neighbours, his prospect of quietness and respect and comfort to the end of his days, and have been content, for he was without ambition.
But he was not satisfied with his own material happiness, for great new forces and powers were abroad in the world struggling together, and this struggle echoed again and again in the heart of the man who stood against the willow paling, gazing into the November mist that shrouded Erith Bulwark and the fen country.
The country had been long at peace, lulled and tranquil after that great triumph of the Reformation of the Church, and that demonstration of material power which had silenced the pretensions of Spain and warned the world what England was.
But Elizabeth was now a generation dead, and the grandson of the Papist Mary sat on the Tudor's throne with a Frenchwoman, a Mary and a Papist too, beside him, and the Church was becoming again corrupt, the power of the bishops daily higher, troubles in Church and State increasing, liberty, civil and religious, threatened—for the King and his ministers had governed nine years without a Parliament, contrary to the laws and ordinances of the realm of England.