the Sidneys. Here was food for romance indeed! Here began a new love-story for the mother, under the very nose of Elizabeth, and the first of several love-stories in the life of Penelope. There were truly inflammable ingredients under that beautiful roof of many gables. As a curious contrast to them move the figures of Philip's mother and father. The former was Leicester's sister, and as widely different from him as balsam from hellebore. She had but one love-her husband; but one desire to live honestly and with gay courage. And she needed it in her poverty, through all the wreck of her beauty. Would Leicester ever have risked his health disinterestedly in his Queen's service? Would he have attended her fearlessly through smallpox, braved the disease, contracted it, and emerged, still brave and loyal, with a disfigured face, saddened yet unembittered, and with no hope of recompense for his devotion and sacrifice? This-as history repeatedly showswas the story of Lady Mary Sidney, and for this reason and because of their poverty Sir Henry and his "Old Moll," as she dubbed herself, were glad enough to escape service at Court whenever possible. Nothing in the nature of a betrothal came out of this hospitality at Chartley. One cannot believe that the hostess was very happy over it. She was never a favourite of the Queen, and the knowledge that Essex had gone upon his errand at such worldly disadvantage must have been hard to forget while Her Majesty walked in the gardens of Chartley, over the estates which, should Essex fall finally upon evil days, might slip into the lap of the Crown. The acquaintance with the Sidneys, however, was to be renewed in London. The Queen summoned Lady Mary to Court, and the poor soul had to obey, while Sir Henry went off to his new post in Ireland. So with her daughter Mary and Philip she took up her residence in London in the family residence on the river, Durham House,' opposite Paul's Wharf. Only a few paces away on the Strand was the mansion of the Essex family, so that the young people of both families could often meet. If Leicester could have kept his mischievous hands out of their joint affairs just now, the affair between Philip and Penelope, despite her tender age, would have been fanned into betrothal. Lord Essex already wrote of Philip from Ireland as "my son by adoption." Had the Earl had more leisure on his flying visit to England, and had Penelope been sixteen instead of fourteen, the parents of boy and girl would assuredly have settled the matter. Leicester's efforts to hurry Essex back to Ireland were certainly among the causes which prevented this happy union. It is further possible that as Philip was his nephew he thought the boy, if unwed, would be more useful to Elizabeth at the moment, and also Leicester might judge Penelope's dowry-if indeed such a thing existed-as useless to an impoverished youth like Philip. For the whole of a winter, a spring, and half a summer then, Philip and Penelope were in constant touch. After this Philip, as a natural sequence of affairs, joined his father in Ireland. Thus the three persons most important to her life and fate in this hour were far from Penelope Devereux when the thunderbolt of bad news fell upon her people. Death crashed across life, across Court entertainments, pageants, the visits of lords and ladies, the Court plays, the gardens, the daily tasks, the prayers, millinery, embroidery. After a very short 1 Originally the London residence of the Bishops of Durham. The site is now occupied by the Adelphi Theatre. and sharp illness (dysentery) Lord Essex died. He faced it quietly, he made his preparations with sweetness and fortitude, while those about him were paralysed with grief, shamed by his patience, unable to bear the sight of his physical suffering. His last letter to the Queen, loyal, humble, pleading, is irradiated by a light which may be truly called saintly. His children were constantly in his mind. Above all, he longed for the coming of Philip. It was one more bitter drop in the Earl's cup that the boy reached him just two days too late to hear from his own lips his wishes in regard to Penelope. But they were faithfully repeated to Philip, with the phrases in which the Earl hungered for his arrival: "Oh, that good gentleman! Have me commended to him. And tell him I sent him nothing, but I wish him well-so well that, if God do move their hearts, I wish that he might match with my daughter. I call him son he so wise, virtuous, and godly. If he go on in the course he hath begun, he will be as famous and worthy a gentleman as England ever bred." In his last prayers for his family the Earl made especial petition for his two girls. Chancellor Gerrard wrote of it to Walsingham: " For his daughters also he prayed, lamenting the time, which is so frail and ungodly, considering the frailness of women. 'God defend them,' said he, 'bless them, and make them to fear his name, and Lord give them grace to lead a virtuous life.' Full well he realised that he had left three women to the mercy of Court temptations, three complex, keen natures, with the heritage of great beauty, in the rich possession of youth, and the prospect of many years of life, for even his wife was quite a young woman, still in her early thirties. |