"Things go too far and too fast for me, and though men speak of the progress we make, to me it seemeth more like a progress into calamities unspeakable."
The young man who spoke leant against the dark-blue and gold diapered wall of the antechamber to the House of Commons, in Westminster Hall; members and their friends were passing to and fro; in a few days the memorable and triumphant session would adjourn. The King was in Scotland, employed, as the Parliament well knew, in one of his innumerable intrigues, this time an endeavour to bring a Northern army into London. The Scots, since the imperfect peace he had patched with them, remained his chief hope. Mr. Hampden was in Edinburgh watching him, but Mr. Pym remained in London, the mainspring of the popular party.
It was late August of the year my Lord Strafford ("putting off my doublet as cheerfully now as I ever did when I went to my bed," he had said), had walked to his death on Tower Hill. Archbishop Laud was a prisoner, and the King had given his consent to a series of Acts which swept away those grievances which the people had complained of, and, most momentous of all, he had passed a law by which it was impossible for him to dissolve Parliament without its own consent.
Therefore it might seem that affairs had never been so bright and hopeful for the leaders of the reforming party, and yet this young gentleman, leaning against the wall and staring at the pool of sunlight the Gothic window cast at his feet, spoke in a tone of melancholy and foreboding.
He had always been a close follower and friend of Pym and Hampden, and always ardent for the public good—one of the keen, swift spirits whose direct courage had helped the House to triumph, but now he stood dejected and rather in the attitude of one who has suffered defeat.
His companion, who was but a few years older, regarded him with a thoughtful air, then glanced dubiously at the crowds which filled the chamber and from which they, in the corner by the window, stood a little apart.
"I take your meaning," he replied, after a considerable pause. "I see a bigger cleavage between King and people than I, for one, ever meant there to be, and prospects of a division in this nation which will be a long while healing."
He bent his gaze on the other side of the chamber where Mr. Pym and Mr. Cromwell were talking loudly and at great length together.
If any casual observer had looked in at this assembly, assuredly it would have been this man by the window at whom they would have glanced longest and oftenest.
His appearance would have been noticeable in any gathering, for it was one of the most unusual beauty and charm.