The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife

by Martin Armstrong

  The Romantic Adventures of

  MR. DARBY

  and of Sarah His Wife

  BY

  MARTIN ARMSTRONG

  Contents

  BOOK I

  Mr. Darby at Home

  I. Emergence of Mr. William James Darby

  II. The Birthday Party

  III. The Morning After the Night Before

  IV. Mr. Darby’s Conversion

  V. The Darkest Hour

  VI. False Dawn

  VII. Suspended Animation

  VIII. Animation Still Suspended

  IX. Snakes and Spiders

  X. Mr. Darby’s Farewell

  BOOK II

  Mr. Darby Cuts the Cable

  XI. Mr. Darby Moves on London

  XII. At the Balmoral

  XIII. Sarah in Revolt

  XIV. Mr. Darby as Man About Town

  XV. Mr. Darby as Art Patron

  XVI. Mr. Darby Enters Public Life

  XVII. The Launching of Sarah

  XVIII. A Public Meeting

  XIX. A Private Discussion

  XX. Revolution in Bedford Square

  XXI. The Revolution Fails

  XXII. Enter Punnett

  XXIII. London’s Punishment

  XXIV. Social Interlude

  XXV. Good-bye, Piccadilly

  BOOK III

  Mr. Darby Assumes the Purple

  XXVI. The Widow Darby

  XXVII. Mr. Darby on Board

  XXVIII. Mr. Darby Abroad

  XXIX. Mr. Darby Repels an Invasion

  XXX. Mr. Darby Faces Death

  XXXI. Mr. Darby Again Faces Death

  XXXII. A Halcyon Day

  XXXIII. Mr. Darby Aground

  XXXIV. Unwaddi Taan

  XXXV. Darby King of the Mandrats

  XXXVI. Punnett Hands Over

  XXXVII. A Royal Conversation

  XXXVIII. A Royal Pardon

  XXXIX. The King was in the Parlour

  XL. Turn Again Darby

  Book I

  Mr. Darby at Home

  Chapter I

  Emergence Of Mr. William James Darby

  Mr. Darby, managing clerk to Messrs. Lamb & Marston, small, plump, pink, clean-shaven, and spectacled, pulled-to behind him the glass-panelled door on which the name of the firm was painted in block capitals and, under it, in flowing italics, the words ‘Architects & Surveyors’. Then, as he always did, he turned the handle and tried to open the door, so as to make sure that the latch had gone home and the door was really locked. It was. Immediately his mind dismissed the office and plunged into the world outside the office door. It was half past five: the day’s work was over. The November evening had already set in. As he paused under the electric light, on the bare dismal top landing with his plump, compact shadow blotting the floor and a segment of wall near the floor, he heard, far below, the confused knocking of two pairs of boots descending the stairs, making the great drab-walled well of the staircase sound empty and stark and hollow. The boots belonged to McNab and Pellow, the junior clerks, to whom Mr. Darby had just said goodnight. As his foot touched the first step of the stairs, he heard, in the well below, a familiar clank. It was the brass tread on the bottom step but three. That meant that McNab and Pellow had nearly reached the bottom, for the stairs from the bottom to the first landing were reinforced with brass treads, and the bottom one but three was loose,—always had been, as long as Mr. Darby could remember. That particular flat, unresonant clank punctuated the beginning of Mr. Darby’s ascent to the office every week-day morning and his completion of the descent in the afternoon; it also recorded his going out to and coming back from lunch, and it produced in him a set of entirely different sensations according to whether he heard it on his ascent or his descent. It was a symbol, but a symbol of two contradictory states, for it was a symbol, of the daily return to servitude and, no less, of the daily escape : it produced in him a small, deep-seated twinge of depression and fear, and, alternatively, a little electric thrill of escape and adventure. At the familiar stimulus, he responded at once to the appropriate feeling : which feeling it was depended simply on whether his face was towards the upstairs or the downstairs world. Now it came to him as an alluring invitation to hurry downstairs, himself to sound the symbolic clank, and then to issue into the hurry and glitter of Ranger Street.

  But Mr. Darby did not hurry. He descended the stairs with a precise, measured, and responsible tread, and from time to time he lightly touched the banisters (a thing he never did on ordinary occasions) with his right hand. The whole thing was very dignified.

  It was not so much that Mr. Darby was deliberately putting it on, as that it was imposed on him. He noted it, he felt it control his actions, but he was not the kind of man to laugh or even smile at it. He accepted it : he believed in it. Besides, there was a reason for it, for to-day was his fiftieth birthday. At odd moments during the day he had been thinking out the speech he would make when they proposed his health at supper to-night. He saw and heard himself already standing at the head of the supper-table looking down, as if from a great height (though actually it was somewhat under five foot three), on the table and seated company, and delivering a leisurely, eloquent, well-considered speech,―a touch of humour here, a touch of pathos there―a speech which seemed to be effortlessly skimmed from a boundless store of rich words and phrases available for every sort of important occasion. It would, of course, be old George Stedman who, at the correct moment, would push back his chair, get on to his feet and propose his host’s health. Undoubtedly it would be old George, for George always rose to the occasion when it was a question of speech-making. Speech-making, you might say, was his hobby and it was not likely on such an occasion as this that he would allow any other guest to forestall him. Mr. Darby knew from long experience precisely what George Stedman would say on the present occasion, and this enabled him to prepare beforehand a perfectly appropriate reply. His speech, he flattered himself, would make at least as much of a hit as old George’s : and he was secretly convinced that, as a speech, it would be very much the finer of the two.

  The loose tread clanked under his sole, and obediently he thrilled with the old sense of adventure. He had descended the whole flight—four landings, forty-five steps—in a dream. In the open doorway he paused, as he always paused, on the threshold of the world. The whole world, and, in the immediate foreground, the whole great roaring town of Newchester-on-Dole, lay before him. Once more the choice was his. Into what part of it should he plunge? It would be useless to plunge straight ahead, for that would mean merely that he would cross the street and enter the premises of Williamson’s Educational Book Store,—not a very interesting nor a very extensive plunge. But if he turned to his right and walked down Ranger Street he would arrive, in five minutes, at the severe Tuscan portico of the Central Station where a ticket might be taken to almost anywhere. Or, still better, if he were to cross Ranger Street and take the first turning to the left along the railings of the churchyard of St. John’s Church whose gaunt tower now stood black against a fading sky of grey and pink, down the passage to the right past the Chronicle office, and then to the left he could, after a somewhat longer walk past the Cathedral, turn south down the precipitious Cliff Street and reach the Quayside where between the black, high-piled buildings that climbed upon each other’s shoulders on either bank, ships made their slow way through smoke and wheeling seagulls, past clanging shipyards and rows of vast cranes like the iron skeletons of huge birds with all their beaks pointing one way, to the open sea and foreign lands. Mr. Darby had always hungered for foreign lands,—
not just France or Germany or Belgium, but terrible places beset with parching deserts, snow-capped mountain-ranges, and green dripping jungles full of scarlet orchids and screeching parrots, lands of fierce, tropical suns and spectacular typhoons, where life was not a safe and unvarying routine but a series of thrilling and unpredictable adventures,—the sort of life that tests a man’s mettle, calls into play all his hidden and unused capacities. How simple it was really, thought Mr. Darby, as he had thought hundreds of times before, standing, an absurd pink-faced, blue-eyed, tubby little cock-robin of a man in black coat, black bowler and gold-rimmed spectacles, in the doorway of Number Thirty Seven Ranger Street—how simple, if one could only get oneself to the point of doing it, to turn to the right, cross the road, pass the Cathedral, plunge down Cliff Street and, by buying a ticket or signing-on or … but no, the stowaway method would be tiresome and unnecessary. … Sign on, step aboard and steam for the Equator. Why not take the plunge? Where was the difficulty? Uncle Tom Darby had done it. But he had started younger. He had, in fact, started thirty-three years younger. Already at seventeen he had tired of living at home and so, one fine day, had simply failed to return from work. Just gone, vanished! So simple. And a couple of years later he had written from Australia apologizing and saying that he was doing very well. Mr. Darby remembered his Uncle Tom turning up in Newchester over thirty years ago,—a fine, breezy person with a strange twanging accent, who put up for a month at the Station Hotel, gave them all great dinners there, talked big talk about sheep and mines and building speculations, and behaved like a lord on a holiday. When his brother, Mr. Darby’s father, had pressed him to return to England, he had shaken his head. ‘Not me! Not likely! No elbow-room.’ And after a couple of months in England he had gone home to Australia. He had taken a fancy to his young nephew Jim and every Christmas, afterwards, had sent him a present of ten pounds. Years later the present suddenly grew to fifty pounds, and for the last ten years it had been a hundred. Every year Mr. Darby wrote him a long letter of thanks, but he never got any reply. The cheque was always folded in a sheet of notepaper on which was written ‘Jim Darby from his Uncle Tom. A Merry Christmas.’

  Mr. Darby, standing in the doorway of Thirty Seven, again focussed the world with his gold-rimmed spectacles. Why not plunge? Uncle Tom Darby had found it simple and refreshing. Then he stepped out from the doorway, turned, not to the right but to the left, and began to walk up Ranger Street, for that, after all, was his way home and the party began at seven.

  A few words here must be said of Mr. Darby’s origins. Except for Mr. Darby himself, nothing noteworthy is known of the Darby family, indeed the Herald’s Office had to confess itself beaten when, in later years, Mr. Darby, by that time Sir James Darby, urged it to pursue the Darbys into the past. A conspiracy of secrecy has, it seems, successfully covered all traces of them prior to the accession of Queen Victoria.

  The first discoverable record of them, bearing the date 1839, shows them settled in Newchester-on-Dole (‘Erasmus James Darby of this city’), so that our Mr. Darby could, and frequently did, boast that they were Novocastrians of nearly a hundred years standing. He himself had settled, on his marriage twenty years ago, in the suburb of Savershill, at Number Seven Moseley Terrace, and, unless the weather was very bad, he always walked to and from the office. It took him half an hour. It was understood that he walked for the sake of exercise, but in truth Mr. Darby got on perfectly well without exercise. He would never have dreamed of walking for the sake of walking. He walked to prolong his contact with the town and postpone the hour of his return to Number Seven Moseley Terrace. He loved the streets and the shops, the crowds of people and the crowd of traffic. The walk up Ranger Street, to the right along the brief section of Brackett Street, and then to the left up Newfoundland Street was a long succession of pleasures. Frequently his progress was interrupted by shop-windows, before which he paused to enjoy a leisurely temptation, while in imagination he made extravagant purchases with the easy indifference of the millionaire. ‘How much are your best peaches?’ ‘One and six each, sir.’ ‘Then send me a dozen—no, two dozen—please.’ ‘Furlined coats? Yes, sir. The one with the astrachan collar is twenty-five guineas, sir.’ ‘You haven’t anything better?’ ‘I’m afraid we haven’t, sir.’ ‘Then you will have to make me one to order.’ Such was the plane on which Mr. Darby’s imagination moved. But to-night imagination was not needed, for he was going, in cold fact, to buy a couple of bottles of champagne. There would be port as well, but there was always port in the house. Sarah saw to that. They both of them liked an occasional glass of port and Sarah got it in—two bottles at a time—with the other groceries. But a fiftieth birthday called for something more than port. In Brackett Street, accordingly, Mr. Darby turned into Edgington’s, approached the counter with the deliberation that the occasion demanded, and there and then opened the dialogue which, in the past, he had so often rehearsed in silence.

  ‘I want a bottle or two of champagne.’

  ‘Certainly, sir. What brand?’

  ‘Well, ah,’—Mr. Darby had foreseen and forestalled this snag—‘ What… ah … do you recommend?’

  ‘Well, we have a very good 1917 Bollinger, sir. A very fine wine. The price is two hundred and seventy-four shillings.’

  Mr. Darby was not ready for that. He flinched and the shopman must have seen him flinch, for with a slight smile he added: ‘Per dozen, sir.’

  Mr. Darby made a rapid mental calculation. Twelves into twenty-seven, two and three over: twelves into thirty-four, nearly three. About twenty-three shillings a bottle! One pound, three! He felt suddenly chilly: his forehead prickled.

  To his relief the shopman provided a loophole: ‘Of course,’ he explained, ‘it’s a dry wine.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr. Darby at once, ‘I don’t much care for a dry wine, and’ he added with some hesitation,’ I want something, ah, a good deal less, ah. …’

  ‘We have a very nice Clicquot,’ said the shopman, ‘at a hundred and thirty-six.’ (Twelve elevens a hundred and thirty-two, said Mr. Darby rapidly to himself). ‘You’ll find that a nice rich wine, sir.’

  Just over eleven bob a bottle. In his gratitude at the enormous drop in price, Mr. Darby felt this to be really quite cheap. It would be safer to close with it. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘that will suit me very well. I’ll take a couple of bottles.’

  ‘Take them with you, sir?’

  ‘If you please.’

  The shopman disappeared leaving Mr. Darby to regain his calm. By the time the man had returned with the two straw-jacketed bottles, made them into a parcel and handed them to him, Mr. Darby was almost himself again. ‘You’ll find that a very nice sound wine, sir,’ said the shopman and Mr. Darby accepted the assurance with dignity and paused, on his way to the door, to examine critically a pyramid of port-bottles, in order to correct any suggestion of flight which his exit might betray.

  Out in the garish town once more, he crossed the street, and steered a straight course, undeflected by alluring shop-windows, up Newfoundland Street. At the top of it the shops came to an end and the less enthralling part of his journey began. He climbed the slope of Tarras Bridge and turned to the right into the long, residential, tram-haunted Savershill Road. There was nothing to charm him now till he reached the railway bridge above Savershill Station and turned up Osbert Road which followed the line of the railway that ran from Newchester to the mouth of the Dole twelve miles away. Here his journey became exciting once more. He always chose the pavement on the western edge of Osbert Road, because by doing so he could look down through iron railings into the railway cutting, and there was always a chance that a train, generally an electric but sometimes a steam train, would pass before he reached the Baptist Church and the houses which followed it and hid the line from the road. Mr. Darby—we may as well confess it—loved the trains, especially the steam trains. Electric trains were unenterprising, short-distance concerns with something of the domestic slur of the tram about them; but ste
am trains were symbols of travel, adventure, escape. The days on which a steam train passed him on the Osbert Road were days of good omen for Mr. Darby. He could no longer, as in his boyhood, sprint for the Savershill Station bridge when he heard one coming, so as to see it pass under him. In those far-off days he used sometimes to try to drop a stone down the funnel of the engine: once he had succeeded and the stone had been alarmingly fired back as if from the crater of a volcano. But nowadays absurd laws held him in check, reminding him of what was expected and not expected of the Managing Clerk of Messrs. Lamb & Marston. He could no longer sprint for the trains: he could do no more than hope that the train would come for him. And to-day he was fifty—half a hundred—and no train thrilled his progress up Osbert Road, and soon he had turned out of Osbert Road, a little saddened despite the two champagne-bottles under his left arm, and a few minutes later was proceeding past the red-brick fronts of Moseley Terrace. Each house had a small square of ineffectual garden before it with clumsy iron railings and gate fencing it from the pavement. Under the third lamp-post Mr. Darby paused, and the gate of Number Seven wheezed harshly as he opened and closed it. He burrowed for his latchkey and clicked it unerringly into the keyhole. As he opened the door a delicious scent of roasting beef saluted his nose. Before a kind of wooden reredos Mr. Darby gravely executed a series of priest-like movements, a ceremony which always inaugurated his entry into the home. He was removing his bowler and coat and bestowing them upon the coat rack.

  Chapter II

  The Birthday Party

  ‘That you, Jim?’ Sarah’s voice came from the back room, the room they used for dining-room and sitting-room combined.

  ‘Coming!’ replied Mr. Darby, rising on his toes to hang up his coat. The front room (the parlour) was never used unless there was company. Its chairs and sofa were upholstered in green plush: there were a great many knitted antimacassars, a great many knitted mats on which stood elaborate coloured glass vases, a great many framed photographs. The photographs included even the harmonium: on the rare occasions on which the harmonium was to be opened, half a dozen or so of them had to be removed and piled on a chair. There was a fan of red paper in the grate which looked as if it had never contained a fire. The flat lifeless air smelt of new carpet. It was cold, even at midsummer, in the parlour, and the cold air, the cold steely reflection of ceiling and walls in the mirror over the mantelpiece, sent a chill to the heart. The door was generally kept shut, but to-night it was open. Mr. Darby, when taking off his coat beside the coat rack, had stood with his back to it and when he turned he saw the warm flicker of firelight on the walls. The door of the back room also was open and Mr. Darby, stretching out his arms to shoot his shirtcuffs below the cuffs of his jacket, approached it and stood in the doorway. A glare of white tablecloth, cutlery and glass greeted him. A tall vase of brown chrysanthemums stood in the middle of the table. Beyond it, Sarah, greyhaired and massive, was bending over the table: there was a clink of spoons and forks. It was not until she had finished what she was doing that she straightened herself and looked at Mr. Darby. She was a large woman, much taller than her husband. Her grey hair was arranged with a severe neatness that could not hide its plentifulness over a square, severe face. It was a firm, capable, uncompromising, domineering face, but a fine face too. It was not the face of a bad-tempered woman, but of a woman who would stand no nonsense. She did not often smile, but when she did, the smile was at the same time grim and indulgent, and the person she smiled at was unexpectedly and inexplicably enchanted. It was only then that any but the boldest discovered with astonishment her magnificent grey eyes. Those eyes it was and her smile that had captured Mr. Darby twenty years ago. Sarah Bouch had spent fifteen years of her life in the service of the Duke of Newchester at Blanchford Castle. Her father was the Duke’s head keeper at Blanchford, and she herself had begun in the kitchen, worked her way up to housemaid (one of ten) and at the age of twenty-nine became head housemaid. She was not only a good worker but also a clever, observant woman and an excellent manager. In the course of her career she had managed to pick up a very comprehensive knowledge of the organization and administration of a vast household. When Mrs. Race, the housekeeper, was ill or absent, Sarah had frequently taken her place, and the only perceptible difference in the Castle at such times was that things ran even better than when Mrs. Race was there. Sarah would certainly have succeeded, sooner or later, to this responsible post, had she not been snapped up, at the age of thirty-two, by the enterprising and adventurous Mr. Darby. What in Mr. Darby had made her allow him to do so was not apparent: perhaps it was that she was fond of children and in marrying Mr. Darby she was providing herself with a child that would remain permanently a child. Thus it was that, though the Darbys had had no children, Mrs. Darby could hardly be called a childless woman.