Sidney

“ Anyone who had seen Philip Sidney as he threw himself on a settle when Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer had left him, and had watched the profound sadness of his face as he gave himself up to meditation on the sorrow which oppressed him, would have found it difficult to imagine how the graceful courtier, who that evening after the banquet at Whitehall led the Queen, as a mark of especial favour, through the mazes of the dance, could ever have so completely thrown off the melancholy mood for one of gaiety and apparent joyousness. ”

“ Sidney seated himself and pouted.
“Poor Sidney! you must be dull without me. Yes, let us play; but put on this handkerchief;” and Philip took off his own cravat and tied it round his brother’s neck, and kissed him.
Sidney, whose anger seldom lasted long, was reconciled; and they went into the garden to play. It was a little spot, screened by an old moss-grown paling, from the neighbouring garden on the one side and a lane on the other. They played with great glee till the night grew darker and the dews heavier.
“This must be the last time,” cried Philip. “It is my turn to hide.” ”

“ But his face was against him; the worn, sallow features, the eyes which so obviously made a struggle to look with frankness, the vicious lower lip, awoke suspicion and told tales of base experience such as leaves its stamp upon a man for ever. All the more repugnant was this face to Sidney because it presented, in certain aspects, an undeniable resemblance to Jane’s; impossible to say which feature put forth this claim of kindred, but the impression was there, and it made Sidney turn away his eyes in disgust as often as he perceived it. ”

“ During that same year he was knighted by the queen at Windsor, and became Sir Philip Sidney.
By the time that he reached the age of thirty, the fame of his many splendid qualities—his learning and literary talent, his bravery, and, above all, his noble honesty—had spread over Europe, while in England, he was the glory of the court and the idol of the people.
There are a kind of little great men who seek to impose on you by pompous ways, proud looks, and high-sounding words; but there was no such poor pride and pretension about Sir Philip Sidney. ”

“ After supper, in the falling of the dusk, Sidney strolled away from the gossiping circle withindoors, and found a corner of the garden whence there was a view of wooded hillside against the late glow of the heavens. Presently he heard footsteps, and through the leafage of a tree that shadowed him he saw Jane looking this way and that, as if she sought some one. Her dress was a light calico, and she held in her hand a rough garden-hat, the property of Miss Pammenter. Sidney regarded her for some moments, then called her by name. ”

“ It was all very well for the men to laugh at Sidney and make fun of her news and her gossip. It was all very well for them to say—as the doctor said, according to his wife, who flashed her eyes at him—that Sidney made her news out of the whole cloth when she did not get it over the grapevine telegraph. Everybody knew how hard men always were on any woman who was not pretty. As though poor Sidney could help the length of her own nose! Let the mean men make fun as much as they pleased! ”

“ Philip had broken to Sidney the sad news of their mother's death, and Sidney had wept with bitter passion. But children,—what can they know of death? Their tears over graves dry sooner than the dews. It is melancholy to compare the depth, the endurance, the far-sighted, anxious, prayerful love of a parent, with the inconsiderate, frail, and evanescent affection of the infant, whose eyes the hues of the butterfly yet dazzle with delight. ”

“ Lucy was thus left alone with her thoughts, and, in silence and solitude, she faced the full weight of this sorrow which had fallen on the house of Sidney, yes, and on her also.
'What right had she to sit and mourn? What part was hers in this great trouble?' Mistress Crawley's words were repeated again and again in a low whisper, as if communing with her own heart.
'What right have I? No right if right goes by possession. What right? Nay, none.'
Then, with a sudden awaking from the trance of sorrow, Lucy rose, the light came back to her eyes, the colour to her cheeks. ”

“ Sidney's countenance changed a little—he became grave, and his cousin noticed the difference.
"Anything wrong?" was the quick question here.
Sidney was annoyed that he had betrayed himself—he who prided himself upon mastering all emotion when the occasion was necessary.
"Oh! no; everything right, Maurice!" he said with a forced lightness of demeanour; "the folly of an engagement that could end in nothing, discovered in good time, and two romantic beings sobered for their good!" ”

“ I was much comforted when he looked up from the letter and grinned.
“Ben Sidney’s boy! Well, your father was the only critter on two legs in Levant, in the old days, who could stand in a barrel, like I could, and jump out without touching the sides. You look as if you have some of his spryness and grit!”
“I hope so, sir. I have always worked at what has come to my hands to do.”
“Dod says business is a mite slow in Levant and that you want a job.” ”

“ A flash of lightning, that illuminated the whole heavens, lingered round Sidney's pale face as he spoke; and Philip threw himself instinctively on the child, as if to protect him even from the wrath of the unshelterable flame. Sidney, hushed and terrified, clung to his brother's breast; after a pause, he silently consented to resume their journey. But now the storm came nearer and nearer to the wanderers. The darkness grew rapidly more intense, save when the lightning lit up heaven and earth alike with intolerable lustre. ”

“ Sidney is so credulous as to believe all the idle inventions of malicious people against me and my son, which, if he were not perfectly blind, he might see is only pure spite and malice. He treats me with a great deal of cruelty, which I think is very severe, first to have spent my precious youth so dismally as I have done, and now, for a reward of all my sufferings, to be abused and despised, and my son rejected, as if he were none of his, and all this to please his great Mistress; but he will find I have more than an ordinary soul, and, though I cannot manage a sword, a pistol I can ”

“ With one hand she removed the shawl that she had thrown over the child, and placing the forefinger of the other upon her lips—lips that smiled then—she whispered,—“We will not wake him, he is so tired. But I would not put him to bed till you had seen him.”
And there slept poor Sidney, his fair cheek pillowed on his arm; the soft, silky ringlets thrown from the delicate and unclouded brow; the natural bloom increased by warmth and travel; the lovely face so innocent and hushed; the breathing so gentle and regular, as if never broken by a sigh.
Mr. Morton drew his hand across his eyes. ”

“ At last Sidney himself ascended as far as any man could climb on the almost sheer face of the peak, and drew as near to his son as was possible, calling to him in his pleasant and persuasive, but unfamiliar, voice, so different from the voices he was used to hear that there was some chance of his paying heed to it. ”

“ I shall go to Lady Mary myself, if I don't see Mr Sidney.'
'Well, well, come home now, or Mistress Gifford will be full of fears about you. I marvel that you should add a drop of bitterness to her full cup.'
'I hate you to talk like that,' Lucy said. 'I love Mary better than all the world beside. No one loves her as I do.'
Humphrey Ratcliffe sighed. ”

“ She was only too eager to do so. "Tell me, Sidney," she gasped, as they hurried through various corridors to the wing in which the King's Counting-house was situated. "Shall we—shall we have enough to live on decently?"
"I don't know what you will think," he replied, with an irrepressible chuckle, "but I should call it affluence myself—positive affluence, my love!"
They arrived at a heavily clamped door, where the Marshal, the Treasurer, and Prince Clarence and Princess Edna were waiting for them. "Two steps down," said King Sidney after unlocking the door. ”

“ The sound of these words by Sir Philip Sidney, sung in a sweet melodious voice, was borne upon the summer air of a fair June evening in the year 1590.
It came through the open casement from the raised seat of the parlour at Hillbrow, where once Mistress Ratcliffe had sat at her spinning-wheel, casting her watchful eyes from time to time upon the square of turf lying between the house and the entrance gate, lest any of her maidens should be gossiping instead of working. ”

“ Mr Sidney laughed.
'He shall come to no harm, Mistress Gifford. My hand is ready to stop him if he falls. But, indeed, there is no fear; he sits square and upright, like a man.'
The beautiful, well-trained horse arched his neck in reply to his master's 'Softly, Hero—quietly,' as he stepped out, raising his feet deliberately, with that stately air which marks high breeding, and pacing down the rugged path of the lane, with slow and measured tread, Mr Sidney at his side, the groom in attendance following with the other horse. ”

“ Sidney has told me that your Highness does me still the honour to preserve me in your good opinion, and that you are so just as to believe me as full of zeal for your service, and as much devoted to your interests as truly and sincerely from my heart I am, and I hope always shall continue to be, but I am not very good at compliments and great expressions, and, if I am not deceived, your Highness cares as little to be troubled with them. ”

“ Next moment Treasure Island went spinning across the room. Sidney caught up the fur rug that was part of the wigwam, and as Hilda, screaming horribly, and with wings not of paper but of flames, rushed down the staircase, and stumbled over the flying machine, Sidney threw the rug over her, and rolled her over and over on the floor. ”

“ A sharp altercation was going on between two of the servants, each wishing to have the honour of taking Lady Mary Sidney's youngest son on his pillion.
Presently the boy himself appeared in his black velvet riding suit, booted and spurred, his red-gold locks—the true Sidney badge—falling over his shoulders from under the stiff, pointed cap which shaded his forehead.
'I am to ride alongside of you, not on the pillion like a babe. Peace! I tell you, Mr Philip saith so. ”

“ Sidney might resolutely keep a bright countenance, but there was no hiding the sallowness of his cheeks and the lines drawn by ever-wakeful anxiety. The effect of a struggle with mean necessities is seldom anything but degradation, in look and in character; but Sidney’s temper, and the conditions of his life, preserved him against that danger. His features, worn into thinness, seem to present more distinctly than ever their points of refinement. ”

“ That evening Sidney Beaufort arrived in London. It is the nature of solitude to make passions calm on the surface—agitated in the deeps. Sidney had placed his whole existence in one object. When the letter arrived that told him to hope no more, he was at first rather sensible of the terrible and dismal blank—the "void abyss"—to which all his future was suddenly changed, than roused to vehement and turbulent emotion. But Camilla's letter had, as we have seen, raised his courage and animated his heart. ”

“ What a hum of satisfaction in God’s creatures! How is it, Sidney, the smallest do seem the happiest?
Sidney. Compensation for their weaknesses and their fears; compensation for the shortness of their existence. Their spirits mount upon the sunbeam above the eagle; and they have more enjoyment in their one summer than the elephant in his century.
Brooke. Are not also the little and lowly in our species the most happy?
Sidney. I would not willingly try nor over-curiously examine it. We, Greville, are happy in these parks and forests: we were happy in my close winter-walk of box and laurustine. ”

“ His English was too pretty for prose. His "Sidneian showers of sweet discourse" sowed every page of the Arcadia with those flowers of conceit, those sugared fancies which his contemporaries loved, but which the taste of a severer age finds insipid. This splendid vice of the Elizabethan writers appears in Sidney, chiefly in the form of an excessive personification. If he describes a field full of roses, he makes "the roses add such a ruddy show unto it, as though the field were bashful at his own beauty." ”

“ Sidney remarked.
"There you're quite right," said old Sarradet with emphasis. He came up to Sidney and laid his hand on his shoulder. "Thank you, Barslow, for looking after that young fool of mine," he added. "You showed great courage."
"Oh, I don't mind a scrap, sir," said Sidney. "I like the exercise."
"Oh, Sidney!" murmured Marie, in a very low voice, not far from a sob. The other girls clapped their hands; the men guffawed; Mr. Claud Beverley made a mental note—Not a bad line that!
Amidst the clash of arms the laws are silent, and even the arts do not go for much. ”

“ Sidney was apt to look at himself through other men's eyes. If he looked at himself as a rich man it was through the eyes of City men, who spoke to one another of him as one of the most successful men in the City. ”

“ As they creaked and swayed down the sandy road Sidney turned searching eyes again upon her companion.
“I mean—are you the baby that was born? You see, Captain Phin Davies told me—”
“Oh, you mean Lavender. No—I am not Lavender. I just live with Aunt Achsa summers; wouldn’t that make me a—sort of half-nephew?”
“But there is a cousin?” Sidney drew a quick breath. “You see everything’s so strange to me that I have to put it all together, like a picture puzzle. And it will be nice having someone young in the picture. Then you’re—you’re—a sort of boarder?” Her voice rose, hesitatingly. ”