Joyce Martindale

Front matter

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON 'TOO EASILY JEALOUS' AN AUSTRALIAN ROMANCE By Mrs H. E. RUSSELL i Vol. Crown Svo. The London Daily Telegraph says—' Told with considerable force and pathos, and the sketches of character ... are in some instances par ticularly well drawn.' The Athenæum says — 'An ornament to colonial authorship.' The Liverpool Daily Post says — ' In this novel an author, hitherto un known to fame, takes by what we presume is a first essay a high position, which it only remains for a continuance of the well-directed power of " Too Easily Jealous " to retain, and to improve. . . . An observer so delicate under-rates her power of being interesting. . . . Quite asoupcon of Jane Austen in the conversations. . . . The catastrophe of the story is managed with tender feeling and with power of climax.

There is no part of her task that Mrs H. E. Russell has not performed well.' The Glasgow Herald says — ' The writer has a keen appreciation of the beauties of nature, and skilfully depicts her impressions.' The Sydney Illustrated News says — ' A novel which has considerable merit, and contains even mojei^ff promise. . . . Mrs Russell has a bright and winning style, and is of course thoroughly at home in Aus tralian surroundings.' The Sydney Evening News says — ' Well written and the side issues to it, along with the events occuring in the lives of the minor dramatic personages, render it interesting.' The Maitland Mercury says — ' The story will be followed with interest throughout, and it appeals powerfully to the domestic emotions.' KEMINGT0N & CO., Limited, London and Sydney. BY Mrs H. E. RUSSELL Anther of ' Too Easily Jealous ' To give an impression of life, this is the whole secret of art ; and this is the secret of the art of the future, as it was the secret of the art of the past.' — Pierrk Loti. ' The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.' — Shakspeare. REMINGTON & CO., LIMITED LONDON & SYDNEY 1894 All rights reserved ••• -*5=a-*-xs*~

Chapter I

' For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.' — Tennyson. 'The observed of all observers.' — Shakspeare. It was the afternoon of Friday, the 3rd of September, 188 — . The day was brilliant with the sunshine of the early spring that flooded the lanes and streets of the city with light. It cut broad shadows on the eastern side of the pavement where already pedestrians walked for shelter ; it sparkled on the sandstone edi fices that gleamed and glittered with a thousand points of light that flashed from their chiselled surface of creamy brown and yellow ; it bathed the huge fig trees and the English oaks just bursting into fresh green leaf, and lit up the dark interstices of the former, while it quivered into gold on the paler verdure of the acclimatised foreigner. That sworn companion and brother-in-arms of the sun, the north-east wind, swept lightly over the green turf at their feet and tossed the living fragrance from the beds of roses that) were new blooming in the park.

It swirled the dust along the narrow streets, narrow as those of some foreign town, and broke the deep sapphire of the sea into crests of foam. It searched out every 3 a leaf and bough that hung heavy with verdure, and swayed to and fro the lance-like leaves of the eucalyptus, that, side by side with oak and plane, bordered the avenues of the Sydney domain. It disarranged the fine dresses of the ladies as they walked down Macquarie Street, and it fluttered the lace of their parasols and the fringe of their mantles, keeping time to their footsteps as the wearers thereof wended their way up the long drive that conducts the visitor to Government House. Here again the sunlight caught the eye as it glittered on the handsome carriages, and flaunted the brilliancy of the silver-mounted harness, adding a gloss to the coats of the well-groomed horses that stood in double line along the gravel champing their bits or restlessly whisking their tails to keep the new-born flies away, while they patiently waited the coming of their masters and mistresses in view of the dark-blue sea that idly heaved below them.

It was the first of the spring receptions, and Lord and Lady Charming were standing at the glass windows opening on to the broad piazza that made their summer drawing-room, ready to receive the crowds that were thronging into the outer court of the presence chamber. For your true-born Australian loves a crowd, and is never happier than when he is one of the motley concourse that throngs the deck of a homeward bound steamer, or struggles for a seat at Flemington, or elbows his way through the mass of moving humanity that comes on the appointed day to pay its respects to the viceregal pair. A quaint and curious crowd it is too. For here you do not find the intermixture of wealth and poverty which is the mark of an English or a foreign crowd — where extremes meet, and where the middle class is conspicuous by its absence.

An Australian crowd is generally all middle class, and should be the delight of the socialist or communist for there seems to be little or no distinction of persons,' and the civil servant or imperial officer walks cheek by jowl with the tradesman, even sometimes with his assistant, and may as likely as not rub shoulders with his tailor or bootmaker as he enters the ante chamber. But if my reader imagines therefore that he is in the heart of a democratic community, let me at once disabuse his mind of that idea, and let me tell him with all the emphasis and assurance of which I am capable, that no clique of the London aristocracy, or inner circle of Hapsburgs, or Hohen zollerns, is more exclusive than that which exists amongst the oldest inhabitants of the city of Sydney. This aristocrac}-, which has been in existence at least fifty years, rarely calls on its neighbours, and seldom recognises anyone without an introduction.

Yet while oblivious of the claims of many sterling citizens to recognition, they lavish attention and entertainment on any ' new chum ' who may hail from the mother isle, no matter how worthless his character, even though he may be sent out to the colonies that his existence may be forgotten amongst his people in England. But if this youngster be only distantly related to some noble or even moderately well con nected family at home, he will be at once received with open arms, and made as much of as though he were the prodigal son returned from, instead of being only at the beginning of, his wanderings. Yet after all there is something very touching in this colonial trait ; for it reveals the strong attachment to their native land that exists in the bosoms of many who have left it when mere children, or who, stranger still, have never seen that country which they always speak of as Home.

So be comforted, gentle reader, and rest assured that our hero is not going to be made out of the tradesman's assistant, or our heroine out of the trades man's daughter, though you will meet them both here to-day in proprid persona. Indeed, such a thing would be impossible in Sydney. For although Regent Street has furnished its quota to one of the most fashionable regiments in the British army, you may feel quite sure that such an anomaly could never be permitted to exist among the officers of our permanent force ; and although the naval man who in honour of the presence of majesty to-day wears his blue uniform and brass buttons, and who is just now being made much of by that group of pretty girls under the camphor laurel to the left, even though he might be the son of an English tradesman, yet his British descent is like the Ægis of Minerva and protects him as does his country's flag.

Yet since we are at the Antipodes, do not be sur prised if the aristocracy numbers amongst its ranks children of Gibeon who have been in their time hewers of wood and drawers of water, or descendants of the shepherd who once minded his master's flocks on the plains, not of Shinar, but of the Upper Murray. Yes, but they are not many in number either ; and our aristocracy principally claims descent from officers appointed by Imperial ukase in the days prior to re sponsible government — squatters who have grown rich on the land-grants given at a time when the un earned increment was never heard of; or was acquired in payment of Government accounts by traders who knew the value of rum and wheat, in those early days of semi-starvation, when guests were ex pected to take their bread in their pockets when they received an invitation to dinner at Government House.

It will probably be a little difficult for the English reader to understand the importance attached by the colonial-born to the honour of beinoreceived at Government House. Probably you who live in the country think of it as the house of the squire who keeps the hounds, or whose fashionable wife leads the county, and to whose mansion an invitation is re garded as conferring a sort of social distinction. But although Government House means all this, to us it also means a great deal more. It is at the same time our court, our camp, our grove. Here the sun of our social life revolves — within its stone walls we have so many of us danced at our first ball, or listened to words, if not of love, yet of tender flattery. The hopes of more than one generation have grown up around and about this grey castellated mansion ; what wonder then if we look upon it with a feeling of something akin to affection and regard.

For two hours Lady Charming stood on the ver andah, receiving the crowd that flowed past her and her handsome husband, that prince of good fellows who possessed the art of making everyone with whom he shook hands believe that he or she was the individual he most desired to welcome to his threshold. Lady Charming certainly fulfilled the first duty of women in that she sustained the pres tige of her name. She wore an exquisite creation of satin of the palest shade of green, like ' The colours of a shell That keeps the wear and polish of the wave,' which was covered with Brussels lace of the finest and most cobwebby texture and hung in graceful folds over the glistening stuff beneath, and crowned with a triumph of millinery art in the shape of a French bonnet. An English earl and countess lent their presence to the scene, which must have looked strangely even to their much - travelled eyes.

A Russian grand duke too was there, wearing a dark green uniform with a cross of gold upon his breast. From the windows of the drawing-room he surveyed the motley crowd, and since the etiquette of all the Russias prevented him from exposing his courtly person to the contact of so unfilled a mob, his share of the enjoyment must have consisted in the know ledge that he had performed an official function. Few of the guests knew that he was there, and if they had known it, the majority could not have realised that it was forbidden to him to enjoy their presence. For reverence is unknown to the Australian native, and the seclusion that springs from a sense of superiority is one of those things wholly inexpli cable and therefore incomprehensible to him. But we have watched the crowd from our vantage ground of the verandah in the rear of the personages long enough, and their numbers are increasing so greatly that we may no longer block the way.

Come down the broad steps that lead on to the gravel path below, and let me introduce you to some people whom you will have to know if you are going to read this story. Joyce Martindale is the daughter of one of our prin cipal professional men, her father being a solicitor in a leading firm in Sydney. Very sweet and very fair she looks as she stands beside the big fountain talking to a group of acquaintances of whom she seems to be the central figure. Tall and slight as becomes a youne woman of the present day, she is clad in the Australian livery of summer, white. It is a creamy silk that clings around her lissome figure, while a hat of softest, palest pink transparency just shades her broad forehead, and lends an added touch of colour to her cheek. Not that she wants colour, for her com plexion is of the roseate hue we are accustomed to call English, but which is peculiar to beautiful women all the world over whether they be of British or continental or colonial extraction.

Yet, like all Australians, Joyce was a true patriot, and would have parted with her complexion rather than that it should be called English, for patriotism is like beauty in that it is of no age nor time nor place ; and it is a peculiarity of Australians that they deem their country second to none upon earth. Joyce belonged to that exclusive set of colonial society in which every beautiful girl aspires to marry an aide de-camp as naturally as her American cousin does an English peer. Yet to her it was so serious a dis qualification that he should be an Englishman, that from such a prize matrimonial she was at once de barred by reason of her nationality. And she was the cynosure of many admiring eyes on this bright spring day — a day so bright that the young Englishman with whom she is talking now can only compare it to a summer's day at home. ' Ton my word,' he says to Joyce, who looks gravely down upon him, for, like many of his travelled countrymen, he is slight and small of stature — ' 'pon my word, Miss Martindale, it reminds me of a summer I once spent at Trentham, in Staffordshire, you know, where I used to bask in the bracken and stare up at the sky, and wonder which was bluer, the harebells that grew in patches below or the sky above.' He was rather poetic for an Englishman, you will say, but you must make some allowances for him.

He had been sent away from a country rectory in a midland county to make his way in the colonies, and the thorough change of the voyage, the glimpses he had caught of India and Ceylon, and now this intro duction into a new society, together with the ex hilaration that the presence of a crowd is apt to produce, had intoxicated him somewhat. When you add to this that a face which mirrored some of the ideal presentments of youth looked into his own, you will understand, or perhaps be ready to make some allowance for, his condition. 'I don't quite know what you mean by bracken, and yet I remember it is in Walter Scott's poetry, you know — " The heath this night shall be my bed, The bracken curtain for my head." Don't you remember ? ' quoted Joyce. Now the Englishman had been educated entirely on the modern system, consequently Walter Scott had not entered into his curriculum.

He could (by rubbing up his school cram) have recalled some passages from the ' Ancient Mariner,' or Milton's ' Samson Agonistes,' but Walter Scott was too old fashioned ; and he had only done the books pre scribed by the examiners, so he dissembled, as we all must do sometimes, even the wisest among us, while he hastened to explain that bracken was only a common kind of fern. ' Fern ! is that all ? ' said Joyce, with a comical air of disappointment. ' I thought it was something much more out of the way than that — only common fern ! Why we have heaps of it all over North Shore,' she said, indicating the coast that bounded their view of the harbour on the opposite side. 'But you have lots of lovely things in your Aus tralian scrub. You know, Miss Martindale, I was quite struck with the fragrant odour of the forest as weneared the coast coming out.' ' Oh ! did you really smell it ? ' beamed Joyce. ' I have heard people say so.

How delightful to find someone who has perceived it. But now, Mr Mans field, tell me what you think of our harbour ? Isn't it, isn't it just lovely ?' and she gazed enthusiastically around her. Put it down to this young Englishman's credit that he never even smiled. This was the question of all questions that he had been told about, warned against and which had formed the subject of numberless jokes on the voyage out. He was fully prepared with half a-dozen repartees on the subject, and knew exactly what was the correct reproof to administer to the culprit who should venture to spring this question upon him. But such considerations vanished like mist before the flame of Joyce's grey eyes. While he was thinking that he should like to tell her how lovely those ' watchet eyes ' were to him, and striving in the interval to collect adjectives which should be strong enough to express his admiration of her harbour, he was interrupted by the arrival of an elderly gentleman who was accompanied by a younger man dressed in the garb of a high -church clergy man. ' Let me introduce my new curate to you, Joyce,' said the vicar. 'Miss Martindale, the Reverend Mr Trewyn.' The vicar was a handsome man of some fifty yeans of age, an old friend of the Martindales, who had christened Joyce and looked forward some day to performing the same office for her children.

Joyce's father and mother were standing a little behind her and heard the introduction. ' Trewyn,' said Mr Martindale to his wife, ' have you forgotten that name ? ' ' Scarcely,' was the reply, ' but your Mr Trewyn was too young to be the father and too old to be the brother of this clergyman, who looks as if he had not long been ordained.' The young priest (for so he would have called himself) stayed to talk to Joyce. Tall, thin, and ascetic, he looked over the top of the Englishman's hat — the latter was plainly handicapped. The vicar turned to talk to Mr and Mrs Martindale. ' Your new curate, Penrhyn ? ' asked Mr Martindale interrogatively; 'are you doing well, think you, to bring him into the midst of such a galaxy of beautj and of worldliness as there is here to-day ?' The Reverend Arthur and Mr Martindale had known each other long and intimately, and the halo of sanctity shed around the vicar had erected no barrier between the two men.

It had been long since replaced by a bond of mutual liking, supported by an occasional agreement to differ when necessary on sundry and divers points of orthodoxy on which Mr Martindale reserved to himself the right of private judgment. ' Oh ! Trewyn is a firm believer in the celibacy of the clergy,' said tbe Reverend Arthur with a smile. 'He may alter his views as time goes on, but he is safe for the next five years, I think. Mrs Martin dale, I see the young people are going to have some tea, will you come too ? ' And the trio of elders followed the girl, as, escorted by the Englishman and the curate, she moved towards the spacious marquee which stood on the larger lawn a little distance further on. Trewyn had absorbed the girl's attention, and was talking earnestly to her; the youno- Englishman, however, would not be shaken off, and as Martindale and the vicar talked together, he took his place beside Mrs Martindale. 'Do you know Mr Hyphen -Highfed ? ' he asked, after fighting his way through the crowd into the marquee and fighting it back again to Mrs Martin dale's side with a cup of tea — a service of no little difficulty when you consider the crowd that thronged the tables and distracted the servants by asking for half-a-dozen things at the same time — 'I expected to meet him here to-day.' ' No doubt he is here,' said Mrs Martindale with a smile; 'a garden party or a reception could not possibly go off without his presence.

Yes, there he is,' she added, indicating a group that moved through the garden beyond, the crowd falling back to make room for them as they passed. ' Is not that Lady Charming ? ' asked the English man. ' I had such a transitory glimpse of her as I passed through, that I hardly know what she was like. She really does justice to her patronymic; one would think she would look a little tired after all that hand-shaking, but she seems perfectly fresh.' ' Yes, that is Lady Charming, and wherever she is, Mr Hyphen-Highfed is not far off. Not that he has the slightest claim or title to be near her, but because he cannot breathe outside the viceregal atmosphere. How he lives no one knows. His name appears to be his sole capital, and he manages to draw an income of invitations from that investment.

So you can't have a better colonial sponsor, I assure you, Mr Mansfield — at all events from a society point of view.' ' He's coming to dine with me to-night,' murmured O CA ' . Mansfield, as, glass in eye, he surveyed the moving scene before him, which was just then diversified by the gleam of the purple and scarlet of a cardinal's robes, and the gold lace of several naval and military officers, ' and I think I'm going to the races with him to-morrow. I suppose I 'shall see you and — ahem — Miss Martindale there.' The mother smiled. ' Yes, I expect we shall be on the lawn some time during the afternoon ; and now, as it is getting late, I think we must be going. Why, there is " God save the Queen." Joyce, don't you see how late it is ? ' ' Yes, mother,' the girl replied. ' That is about the only tune I do know.

Good-bye, Mr Trewyn. Good bye, Mr Mansfield.' The band crashed out its parting chords, the men lingered a moment, holding their hats in their hands. Mr Martindale escorted his wife and daughter through the trellis work that bounds the private grounds, and put them into a waiting hansom. ' Darling Point,' he said to the cabman, and turned to walk along the avenue. Here Penrhyn and his curate joined him. 'Don't suppose Penrhyn knows all his curate's belongings,' he thought to himself; 'but I wonder if he is related to the Trewyn I knew long ago. Shouldn't like to ask him though ; it would involve an awkward explanation.' Then he turned off from the sentry-gate to catch a tram, and Mansfield went to the Hotel Metropole to wait the arrival of Mr Hyphen-Highs ed. 'Trewyn,' said the Reverend Arthur to his curate as they walked together to the street corner, ' I shall want you to preach for me on Sunday morning week.'

Chapter II Ah

pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, the bloom is shed ; Or like the snowfalls on the river, A moment white — then melts for ever. — Zums. It was carnival time in Sydney just then. We colonials are a gay people, with something of the sunshine of our country in our blood, and following the instinct of all southern races, we keep the festival of springtime in our modern fashion, just as the Latin races sang praises for the buds and blossoms of their vines, or the Rhodian villagers hymned their swallow song to the first returning wanderer of the feathered tribe, more than two thousand years ago. It is true that winter does not symbolise cold and darkness to us, neither does it rob us of our flowers, for there are many that bloom only in the colder days that we misname winter, none the less does the ferment of Nature that we call spring riot in our veins, and, leavening our mental atmosphere even as she does the fibre of the vegetable world, quicken us into newness and freshness of life.

So it is that from time immemorial (immemorial, be it understood, meaning something under fifty years) Australian society has frolicked and feasted during the first fortnight in September. Balls, races, and garden-parties occupy every available moment, until the fashionable maiden feels as if for a short space she has trodden the mill of London society, and tasted the cup of delight that most girls love to dream of drinking some day. Lady Charming's reception was what we might call the overture to the opera of joy that had to be played out during the coming fortnight. A small dinner that night, races on the following day, an afternoon party on board one of Her Majesty's ships of war, now lying in a protective sort of fashion at the foot of Government House grounds, a race ball the same evening, more races on Tuesday and Thursday, a bachelors' ball on Wednesday, a small dance on Thursday, and a ball at Government House on Friday, with a final flutter at Randwick on Saturday afternoon, was the programme that Joyce and her mother had before them when we met them at the reception on the opening Friday of their spring campaio-n. It had been a busy fortnight, too, through which they had passed previous to the beginning of September, for dressmakers and milliners are but mortal, and the preparation of a sufficiency of gowns and bonnets for only two ladies of a family entails an alarming amount of shopping where resources are not unlimited and where shops are not too numerous.

But with a si oh of relief Joyce had to confess, as she looked at her things laid out on the bed of the onlv unoccupied room of the house, that the united labours of her mother and herself had not been wholly in vain. She was an odd combination of intellect and frivolity, of love of mirth and gladness, with deep down in her heart a strong sense of the nobilitv of the highest purposes of life, and a consciousness that were it necessary she too could emulate the heroic deeds she never tired of reading about. Yet frills and laces, hats and ball gowns, were just as dear to her as in her other moods were Emerson's transcen dentalism or Carlyle's heroic exhortations, the romance of Coleridge or the ideality of Tennyson. Just now chiffons were certainly in the ascendant horizon of her temperament, and the same earnestness with which she used to study 'Sartor Resartus' was thrown into the consideration of the fall of a frill, the sit of a skirt, or the cut of her jacket.

Thus, though she had enjoyed her light talk with the English stranger without leading him to suspect that in her lay anything deeper than the unconventionality of the Australian type, which was new, and therefore interesting to him, yet the introduction to Trewyn and her subsequent conversation with him had touched a deeper chord, and had been just sufficient to tell her that there was an affinity between this ascetic-looking stranger and herself that made her glad to know she was likely to meet with him again. After all, their talk had been simple enough. Joyce had remembered that one of her numerous acquaint ances had spoken of him to her as a promising under graduate at Oriel, and she had mentioned the name that bridged over the gulf of utter strangeness that loomed between them. Oddly enough, the girl's ambition had always been that of scholarship, although her own intelligence was of that impressionable type which receives with too great aptness to retain per manently.

Trewyn had lived so secluded a life, and his aspirations had been almost as closely bounded by the college walls as those of a monk within the cloister, that it gave him a strange sense of pleasure to find a way to the acquaintance of this charming girl, through the friendship of one of the men of his year for whom he had cared even a little. It was a golden link in life's chain of circumstances that would at least make the world seem brighter to him for the present. Joyce had what the Americans call a perfectly lovely time during that bright carnival fortnight. The weather was fine, at least on race days, and for the balls it did not much matter; her dresses fitted almost as well as she expected, and though she knew quite well that lots of girls looked much better than she did (which was quite untrue, and only part of that dissatisfaction with ourselves, which is the groundswell of half the sadness of the world), yet on the whole as she counted over the joyous hours of the all golden afternoons, or the glowing moments that she chased till midnight with her flying feet, she felt she had really had one of those good times that does not often fall to the lot of mortals, even though they be young and beautiful and intimate with the Govern ment House people.