His expression was at once fierce and tender and deeply thoughtful; the brow, so carelessly shaded by the disordered brown hair, was free from any lines, the grey eyes seemed as if they looked curiously into the future, the lips were lightly set together, and seemed as if they might at any minute quiver into speech, the line of his jaw and cheek had a look of serene fierceness, like the noble idea of strength given by the jaw of a lion.
So he looked, reflected in the old mirror and lit by the two common candles, and if one had suddenly glanced over his shoulder into the glass and seen that face, they would have thought they looked at a painting of abstract qualities, not at a compound human being, at this moment so utterly was his rugged look of strength and fortitude spiritualized by the radiance of the soul within.
Outside the rain fell and there was no sound but the drip of the drops on the sill; the great city was silent after the tumult of the day, most people were eating, sleeping, going their ways as if there was no King humiliated utterly, raging in his chamber; no Queen weeping among her priests; no great man in prison writing to his wife: "Hold up your heart, look to the children and your house, and at last, by God's good pleasure, we shall have our deliverance"; no quiet gentleman from Huntingdon standing in a quiet room and meditating things that would change this city and this land as it had not been changed since it bore the yoke of kingship.
To the many, even to Mr. Pym and Mr. Hampden, the fall of Strafford might seem a tremendous thing, a shrewd blow against tyranny and a daring act, but to this younger man, with his deeper, more mystical, religious fervour, his practical and immeasurable courage, the sweeping aside of the King's favourite was but the first of many acts that would utterly alter the face of England.
Strafford might have gone, but there were other things to go—Papistry, the Star Chamber, ship money, and other civil wrongs, bishops, prayer books, church ornaments and choirs, and other pollutions of the pure faith of Christ, and there was a burning, blazing ideal to be followed—the ideal of what might be made of England in moral worth, in civic liberty, in that domestic dignity and foreign power that had made the reign of Elizabeth Tudor splendid throughout the world.
This might be done; but how was a poor country gentleman, untrained in diplomacy or war, to accomplish it?
How dare he presume that he was meant to accomplish it?
He moved from the table abruptly and, going to the window, rested his head against the frame and stared through the soiled panes into the dark street where the lights glimmered sparsely at long intervals in the heavy winter air.
He recalled and clung to the memory of the vision that he had had in the old barn outside St. Ives; the certainty that he was in covenant with the Lord to do the Lord's work in England had pierced his soul with the same sharpness as a dagger might pierce the flesh. At times the remembered glamour faded, weariness, misgivings, would cloud the glorious conviction—yet deep-rooted in his noble spirit it remained. God had spoken to him and he was to do God's works,—but the practical humanity in him, the strong English sense and sound judgment demanded—how?
He was of full middle age and unaccomplished in anything save farming and such knowledge of the law as less than a year's training could give him. His education had been the usual education of a gentleman, but he had less learning than most, for his college days had been short, owing to the death of his father and the sudden call to responsibilities, and he had absolutely no love for any of the arts and sciences. How then was he equipped to combat the immense powers arrayed against him—the King, the Church, immemorial tradition, custom, usage, the weight of aristocracy, the example of Europe—for his design, though yet vague, was to create in England a constitution for Church and State for which he could see no pattern anywhere within the world.