Part 38

Nothing could have been more humiliating to Sidney's highstrung and sensitive temperament than to be kept dangling about a court where the queen turned but cold glances upon him, and where her nobles were permitted to slight him, after the usual manner of courtiers who "kick whom royalty kicks, and hug whom royalty hugs."

Philip Sidney was a most unusual courtier. He had more than once held out a manly hand to one who had come under her Majesty's disfavor, but whom he regarded as stanch and deserving; and he had not failed to condemn where she smiled, if he felt that condemnation was deserved.

With his great patron dismissed from royal favor, and London full of gay French and English courtiers who looked upon him as an enemy, Philip Sidney stood almost alone. Yet was he in no whit daunted, nor did he yield one hair's breadth of the high ground he had taken. His was that finer courage that can dare the whole world for a principle and stand alone upon the right.

As may be imagined, this independence of spirit was most distasteful to the vain and fickle queen; but Sidney's grace and talents and personal beauty rendered him a courtier with whom she was unwilling to dispense. The queen had favored him for these lesser gifts, but the great heart of the English people loved him for the chivalric spirit she valued not, and for the indomitable manliness that would not truckle--not even to the queen.

During this period of her Majesty's displeasure toward him, Sidney was often stung to the quick by petty slights from his fellow-courtiers, but on one occasion the offender went too far. The brutal but powerful Earl of Oxford--head of the party who favored the proposed marriage--had long been a rival of Sidney's in the queen's favor, and there was no love lost between them.

One day at Whitehall, as Philip Sidney and some of his friends were engaged in a game of tennis, the Earl of Oxford entered the court, uninvited, and demanded a part in the game. The presence of a number of French courtiers as lookers-on and listeners led him to assume a tone that was even more arrogant and offensive than was usual with him.

At first, Sidney took no notice of the intrusion; but the studied rudeness becoming unbearable, he at length reproved the offender firmly. At this, Oxford fell into a rage, and ended by ordering the players out of the tennis-court. Sidney met the earl's haughty gaze with one of proud defiance, and answered,--

"If your Lordship had been pleased to express the wish in courteous terms, you would have been met with courtesy, and perchance might have led out those who will not now be driven out with any scourge of fury."

"Puppy!" exclaimed the infuriated earl.

A coarse laugh went up from the spectators, and they immediately began to crowd the tennis-court to see the end of the quarrel. This pleased Oxford much, for he was seeking to make a fine show before them.

Sidney realized that he was surrounded by enemies; but the fact only put him on his mettle, and he demanded, calmly,

"My Lord of Oxford, what is that which you called me?"

"A puppy," repeated the earl, and his followers laughed again.

"That is a lie!" answered Sidney, in tones that rang out clear and sharp.

A bolt from the skies could not have taken his listeners more aback. The spectators looked to see Oxford attack or challenge the slender young courtier who had flung the lie in his teeth; and Sidney himself waited in a fierce quiet for the answer which he, and all present, felt Oxford was bound to make.

The answer did not come. Oxford contented himself with quarreling in a loud voice; but those whom he was trying to impress were not deceived by his bluster, and all present knew that he had proved himself a coward.

When Sidney saw that his opponent was not going to challenge him, he made up his mind to throw down the gauntlet himself, for he was too indignant to let the matter drop without a personal encounter.

"My Lord of Oxford," he said coolly, "this is a business that can be settled better in a more private place." With that, he turned and walked out of the court.

This, of course, was a challenge; and all the next day Sidney looked for the message of acceptance which Oxford was bound, by the code of honor, to send him. At length it became apparent that Oxford was trying to avoid the duel. This, Sidney had no idea of allowing him to do; so he sent a messenger to the earl, asking whether he should hear from him or not, and adding--

"His Lordship's French companions can teach him, if he does not know, what course he ought to take in this affair."

Thus goaded, Oxford sent an acceptance; but before the duel could take place, the lords of the Privy Council forbade it, and besought the queen to effect a reconciliation between the two.

The queen's way of reconciling them was to send for Sidney and scold him roundly. She pointed out to him the difference between peers and commoners and the respect that inferiors owed to superiors, then she commanded him to apologize to the earl.

"That, your Majesty," he answered, steadily, "I cannot do. No peer has, by his rank, privilege to do wrong; and though the Earl of Oxford be a great lord by virtue of his birth and your Majesty's favors, he is no lord over Philip Sidney."

In spite of queen and court and Privy Council, Philip Sidney would not retreat an inch from this position; and Oxford was compelled to take refuge in her Majesty's order, to avoid fighting with the fiery young courtier. Shortly afterwards, the earl sent a messenger--supposed to be Sir Walter Raleigh--with the proposition to Sidney that their disagreement cease. Thus was the coward peer compelled to humble himself to the proud commoner.

Negotiations for the queen's marriage to Anjou progressed favorably for a while, to the deep distress of Sidney. Actuated by his great distrust of Anjou and his equally great dislike to any sort of alliance with France, he at length addressed a letter to the queen, setting forth without reserve his objections to her marriage. He warned her Majesty, in the most unmistakable terms, of the worthlessness and viciousness of her suitor, and ended with a passionate appeal to her not to enter into an alliance which would so surely cripple the advancement of the English Church. But Sidney's letter was not one of reproof and entreaty only. All through its pages could be seen the romantic devotion of subject to sovereign, and the chivalric respect of a man for the woman whom he imagined to be possessed of all feminine virtues.

The "most excellent lady" to whom the letter was indited answered it by flying into a rage and dismissing the writer from court.

This was scarcely punishment to Sidney. He hated the vanities of court life with his whole heart, and when he was thus dismissed, he was as one from whom heavy shackles had been struck. He spent the time of his exile with his beloved sister, the Countess of Pembroke, and while at her home, wrote some of his best poems.

The queen forgave Sidney, all too soon for him, for he had to be persuaded, nay, almost forced back into her silken fetters. The Earl of Leicester was already reinstated in her Majesty's good-will when Sidney came back, with reluctant grace, to be again an ornament of her court.